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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25510444">The Clock Strikes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaLeeWrites/pseuds/EmmaLeeWrites'>EmmaLeeWrites</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Nightmares [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Five Nights at Freddy's, Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Conspiracy Theories, Depression, Gen, Geoff Ramsey (Briefly) - Freeform, Jeremy's got a story to tell, Lindsay's off doing her own thing, Maybe a bit of murder, Michael wants to know what the fuck happened to Gavin, Mystery, Not Michael, Sort Of, Touches of past abuse, Who Knows?, anger issues</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:40:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>22,818</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25510444</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaLeeWrites/pseuds/EmmaLeeWrites</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Gavin's gone and disappeared. Michael and Lindsay have been left with a thousand questions and no answers and the task to find the person the animatronics say killed a group of children. But when fact and fiction seem to go together like yin and yang and Lindsay's called to a long-lasting family emergency, how the fuck is Michael supposed to figure out what's going on? With Jeremy Dooley, apparently.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Nightmares [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767145</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Dawn Of The First Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The first thing Michael does when he gets home from work is collapse onto the couch. It’s the shitty one he’d given to Gavin not long after they’d met. He hadn’t wanted it then, and honestly, he doesn’t really want it now. It’s just… it’s Gavin’s couch. Gavin had taken it. He’d used it. They’d both considered it his. It even smells like him, but Michael would be hard-pressed to actually describe the smell, if he actually admitted that to anyone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then Gavin had gone and disappeared and nobody could find him, and look at that- Michael was the only person that could do anything about his stuff. He’d taken it all. Even the stuff he didn’t actually want, because Gavin wanted it, and when Gavin shows up again--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s not going to look his best friend in the eye and admit he’d thought he was dead. He can’t. And despite what everyone says, despite all the evidence, Michael refuses to believe Gavin is actually dead. Missing for sure, but dead? Gavin won’t be dead until Michael sees a body.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael flops over onto his back. All the lights are still off in his apartment, but the light of the billboard outside his living room window illuminates the room enough. Everything is right where he’d left it. Even the bowl of half-eaten cereal is still on his coffee table. He’d eaten that before going to work for the night because he didn’t feel like cooking. He never feels like cooking anymore.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He rubs his eyes and groans. It’s midnight. He should go to bed now so he can get up in the morning and meet up with Lindsay for breakfast. Then they can spend the day looking for clues about Gavin’s whereabouts, or whatever the fuck is going on with the animatronics at Freddy’s, or maybe just go for a long walk and pretend everything is a-okay.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shit, he’s a real mess, isn’t he? Just going through his days robotically in vain hopes somehow something will click and everything will fall back into their normal place. The worst game of tetris ever. He’s trying to put a square block into a circular hole and wondering why it won’t go in. </span>
  <em>
    <span>What the fuck am I doing?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael reaches over and turns on his tv. For some reason it’s on a kids channel. He doesn’t know the show, some cartoon animals dancing around and playing a game. He watches for a minute or so, then looks back at the ceiling. He doesn’t turn the tv off. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe if I close my eyes and fall asleep I’ll dream I’m a kid again… no worries, no job, no missing friend, no murder animatronics. Just me, the neighborhood kids, and a game of tag. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Or hide and seek-- those had been fun, even if he wasn’t very good at the game.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The music of the kids show fades away.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It becomes a pattern, somehow. Get done with work, lay on the couch, turn the TV on (and it’s always on a kids show, but it’s not like he has many channel options anyway), and fall asleep. Usually he doesn’t dream. Sometimes he wakes up with vague memories of colorful shapes dancing just out of reach. He always smells like shit when he wakes up, too, like old grease and pizza. Michael never showers after getting home, though. He does that in the morning, like he likes the way he smells when he wakes. He doesn’t.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One week. Two weeks. Three. A month. Two months. Six months. No sign of Gavin. No closer to figuring out the damn mystery surrounding Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Nearly a year since Gavin disappeared, and Michael still refuses to think he might be dead. Lindsay knows, and even though he knows she disagrees, she always goes along with whatever shitty idea he comes up with to look for him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sometimes he wonders if they hallucinated everything that had happened when they snuck into the burned building of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. There must have been a gas leak after the fire. Something horrible to make them actually think that the animatronics had come to life and talked to them. They can’t really be alive. Sentient. It was a bad trip and now they’ve gone on a wild goose chase over nothing, and who knows what Gavin got up to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Still, after eight months, Michael is tired. Tired with life, tired with himself. Just tired.</span>
  <em>
    <span> Is this what depression is?</span>
  </em>
  <span> He wonders, staring at his ceiling, bright with the morning light. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Why?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Why, what?</span>
  </em>
  <span> A voice that sounds suspiciously like Gavin’s says, from some hidden corner of Michael’s mind. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Why is it like this or why do you have it?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael doesn’t grace it with a reply, because he’s smart enough to recognize that hearing voices in your head isn’t normal, thank you very much. The last thing he should be doing is talking back to it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Well, that’s your problem, not mine.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Not-Gavin says.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Michael finds a lead on one of his days off. Lindsay is away, visiting family. Has been for most of the week, actually, something about a sickness in the family. Not someone she’s super close to, but she’d gone anyway, leaving Michael alone. As always. He tries not to feel like it’s anything personal, because it really isn’t, but he still hates the way he feels left out and alone. So when he gets a message from someone on a long-abandoned conspiracy message board that he’d checked out, he’s pleasantly surprised.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He hadn’t actually expected anyone to answer his post, being that his activity was the first in nearly four years. But someone did, saying only ‘Do you have a phone?’, and Michael had been so surprised he’d given his number without a second thought. It takes three hours and forty-four minutes for the person to text him. He’d counted, anxiously, every single minute.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The person introduces himself as Jeremy. He’s four years younger than Michael (he’s seventeen, his mind repeats, seventeen), and he’d worked at a Freddy’s location for a few months when he was fifteen. He’d lied about his age and used his shortness to his advantage (he’s short, not young, obviously) to get the job because his mother had been in the hospital with cancer and they’d needed some way to make money. Jeremy tells him this without any sort of filter at all; just the lead-up to his own experience. Then he asks about Michael’s experience. Michael takes a while to debate what he should say. On the message board he’d only asked if anyone else had had weird experiences on the night shift-- nothing more, nothing less.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Should I tell him?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Michael wonders. </span>
  <em>
    <span>This could all be a lie.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>What if it isn’t? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Not-Gavin says, and solidifies Michael’s resolve.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>It was my friend, really.</b>
  <span> Michael sends.</span>
  <b> He said the animatronics came to life at night and tried to kill him and corporate told him he couldn’t talk about it or else. My girlfriend and I went to check it out one night when he wasn’t working and… they talked to us like they were alive. The animatronics, I mean.</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It takes three minutes for Jeremy to respond.</span>
  <b> Did they try to kill you?</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>Not really. I think we somehow convinced them it was a bad idea, and then they talked to us. Said they didn’t like adults because one apparently killed a bunch of kids and hid them inside the animatronics. They told us they wanted us to tell people and find the kids. Or find the person that did it. They mostly talked in one-word sentences. </b>
  <span>Michael frowns. </span>
  <b>I don’t know if that was age, misuse, or the fact that they had narrowly missed getting incinerated in a building fire.</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>What’s your friend say?</b>
  <span> Jeremy asks.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>My friend isn’t available for talking at the moment.</b>
  <span> Michael texts back, not wanting to say anything more about Gavin.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>Is he dead?</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Michael snorts humorlessly. </span>
  <b>Missing technically. He disappeared. Most people think he’s dead. Basically waiting for a year to go by so they can say he’s dead with confidence. I don’t believe it. Look, I don’t want to talk about that, alright? I told you my story. Tell me yours.</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy texts back nine minutes and thirty-eight seconds later with a fair-sized paragraph of text. </span>
  <b>I worked the night shift too, here in Boston. I’m not sure how the one near you was run, but about three weeks before I applied they completely remodeled the entire place. Gave the animatronics hard plastic exoskeletons instead of the original fur design. Updated the software the animatronics used. Even gave them facial recognition, but only to recognize criminals and shit. People in the system. I was the second night shift worker since the remodeling, and well, it was pretty bad. The security office was just the helpdesk, and I just sat at the end of a hallway with two vents on my sides. They gave me an empty Freddy head to wear when the animatronics got close so they wouldn’t try to kill me because- get this- at night the facial recognition stops working and the animatronics think EVERYONE is a criminal. Guess I didn’t have all that much trouble dealing with them. The Mangle was the worst. It was Foxy, but during the day kids just tore it apart so the company left it. At night it hated people with a passion and it wasn’t as easy to trick. I tried asking the day workers about all of this. The manager didn’t believe me at all, and when I tried getting ahold of the people above her they were pretty adamant that I wasn’t to tell anyone about anything. I don’t know if they knew what was going on, or if they were afraid of the bad PR, or if they didn’t believe me in the first place. I didn’t have anyone to tell, anyway. Leaving school and lying about my age to pay for living kind of got rid of any friends I might have had, and I didn’t have any in the first place. I tried to find out why the place had been remodeled, why the animatronics were immediately malfunctioning. I even tried to figure out why they seemed so… alive. Mangle especially. That guy’s straight-up sadistic. But all of them seemed more alive than a bunch of robots should have been. Guess me and your friend have similar experiences, huh? And you and your girlfriend, too. Strange that two different locations would have such similar malfunctions… even with two apparently different causes.</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Michael rereads the entire thing three times. It is weird that both would have the same malfunction. Hate people, especially at night. One apparently caused by being used to hide the corpses of children, the other… what, malfunctioning criminal facial recognition? And how do you explain the near-sentience?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He writes his text carefully. </span>
  <b>Maybe there’s something in the code. I can’t imagine they make different code for each location, so if there’s something wrong with the base… it could cause problems all over the place. Maybe the code was written to make the animatronics seem alive, and now with the experiences and upgrades the animatronics have gone through it just isn’t mixing right?</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>Yeah, maybe. We should get together and talk. This is probably the most eye-opening conversation I’ve ever had about Fazbear Entertainment. There’s got to be something else going on, even if it’s just stemming from willfully ignorant CEOs or some shit.</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Michael bites his lip. He doesn’t know anything about Jeremy except for what Jeremy’s told him. It could all be a lie. It could be worse than a lie-- deliberate trickery. Malicious intent. But if it isn’t… he has someone else that knows Fazbear Entertainment is hiding something dangerous. Even more, he has someone else that could help him look for Gavin. Gavin… did Gavin go looking into this too? He was injured and half out of it, but could he have gone off to do his own investigating?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Michael swallows a sudden lump in his throat and texts Jeremy. </span>
  <b>You’ll have to come here.</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>Tell me where you live and I’ll be there as soon as I can.</b>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. One O'Clock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Michael wakes from his nightmare with a start. He fights his own paralysis for a moment, stuck between fight, flight, and freeze. The heartbeat in his throat slowly goes back to its place in his chest. He rolls off the couch, rubbing his eyes frantically. The carpet, even though it’s thin, is soft against his knees. He stays like that for a few minutes. The echoes of his dream slowly fade into little more than distant, paralyzing fear, but he can’t remember what it was. Something bad. Something fake. Drowning and burning and bleeding all at once and somehow, screaming through it all. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Slowly he climbs from his knees and stretches.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s Sunday. Jeremy will be here today. Jeremy will be here today and Michael needs to meet him at the airport, because apparently the man didn’t want to drive all the way (and it’s only a day’s worth of driving, but apparently flying was the better option. Whatever, Michael didn’t care. However seventeen-year-old-Jeremy gets enough money to fly, Michael doesn’t care enough to ask.) So Michael needs to meet him at the airport, and then he’ll spend the next who-knows-how-long playing host to a man-- a kid!-- he’s never met before and only spent about twenty-four hours talking to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He makes himself a cup of coffee and a piece of toast for breakfast. The dream has dissipated almost entirely from his memory, leaving only vague fear and more than that, annoyance at himself that he even felt it in the first place. He thinks about Jeremy some more, wondering if they’ll find anything similar between themselves beyond Fazbear Entertainment. It’s pretty up in the air at the moment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lindsay is still visiting sick family and likely won’t be coming back for a while. She’d still insisted he stay home, so he considers it not-as-bad-as-it-could-be. Even though meeting her family for the first time probably isn’t the best idea when one of them is sick… He sends her a text-- </span>
  <em>
    <span>How’s it going over there?</span>
  </em>
  <span>-- and moves onto showering. It’s short and cold and Michael hates it like usual. He hates warm showers, too. Why use warm water when cold water wakes him up more, and he hates it either way?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lindsay’s reply is a simple </span>
  <em>
    <span>Same as ever</span>
  </em>
  <span> and Michael acknowledges it with a one word answer. The television plays some news, and then an episode of Sesame Street that somehow manages to suck him in like he’s seven again. Then it’s suddenly one in the afternoon and he doesn’t even know how, and he’s running out the door to get to the airport. His car takes five minutes to start--something he really doesn’t need right now-- traffic decides to be on its worst behavior, then there’s a car crash and a line a mile long redirecting this way and that and it’s just like every other shitty day.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But he’s meeting Jeremy today, and somehow… it’s actually not terrible. Michael plays the radio the entire time and whistles along. He doesn’t know the songs. That doesn’t stop him. When he’s caught in traffic he only yells once. He’s redirected quickly enough to a new route-- one that isn’t filled with people stuck in the same situation as he is, thankfully.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The airport isn’t as far as he thought it was, and he makes it all the way across to Jeremy’s terminal before the plane even lands. There’s a Dunkin Donuts nearby, so Michael decides to treat himself with a coffee. Nothing special, though when Not-Gavin cheerfully asks him to add caramel he does it without thinking. He buys a donut, too, and sits at the table on his phone and waits as patiently as he can.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The plane arrives thirty minutes late and the passengers disembark twenty minutes after. Michael’s patience has somehow not waned during that time. He refuses to acknowledge that Not-Gavin may have had something to do with it. There’s a hazy sort of feeling over his mind as he watches the passengers all walk in the same vague direction to baggage claim.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then Jeremy walks out of the door, looks around, and heads and over to Michael. Michael knows it’s Jeremy because he’s short, built like a fucking monster truck, and wearing the worst color scheme in the world-- a purple hoodie and orange fucking sweatpants. As promised.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I wonder if he recognized your resting bitchface or your curly hair?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Not-Gavin wonders. </span>
  <em>
    <span>And before you tell me to shut up, you did tell him to look for those traits specifically.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>You can shut up anyway,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Michael answers. He offers a half-smile to Jeremy. “You weren’t joking about your appearance, huh?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy smiles a lot more genuinely. “Neither were you!” He offers his hand. “Jeremy Dooley. Nice to meet you in person.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael takes it. “Michael Jones. Ready to head to my house?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, I gotta get my stuff first. Hey, what do you think of cats, actually?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Cats?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Not-Gavin says. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I love cats!</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael raises an eyebrow and studiously ignores Not-Gavin. “Why?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy scratches the back of his head and smiles sheepishly. “Because I brought my cat with me?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re seventeen, you have a cat, and you have enough money to take a plane? What the fuck do you do for a living?” Michael isn’t actually bothered by Jeremy having brought his cat. As long as Michael doesn’t have to take care of it-- he’s fine.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy laughs. “Yeah, let’s not get into that.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy’s cat is named Booker, and he’s the fattest cat Michael has ever seen. And the nicest, too, all wide eyes in shadowy black fur as he meows at Michael like an angel. He takes to Michael’s shitty apartment like a fish to water, walking immediately over to the couch and plopping himself down in the middle of it like he owns the place.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy does the exact same thing. He sits next to Booker with the same amount of comfort. He pulls his laptop out and looks at Michael, expectant.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ready to get started?” He asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael blinks at him. “Did you have an idea? Because I’ve exhausted myself trying to find any information at all.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy seems to think about this. He looks back to his computer, then at Booker, then back to Michael. “That’s fair. Maybe we should talk more in depth about what we do know. Our experiences, that kind of stuff. We already think the animatronics are sentient, but we should definitely look for some more evidence towards that eventually. We need to figure out what we actually want to focus on, too. Because if we try to do everything at once we aren’t going to have much luck at all.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael swallows. The air is suddenly hot; too much and not enough all at once. His skin itches like something crawls underneath it. He picks at it unthinkingly. “I want to find my friend.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So we focus on him and leave the sentient animatronics on the backburner, then. Because we have no evidence that the animatronics’ sentience had anything to do with his disappearance.” Jeremy shrugs. “Once we find your friend-- or decide that we definitely won’t, whatever happens-- we can move on to the next detail.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Okay.” Michael crosses his arms. Not-Gavin is annoyingly silent, for once. “Well, people have checked just about everywhere. There’s not enough traffic cameras to find his path through the city, and police double checked Freddy Fazbear’s. There’s not really any evidence pointing to him being anywhere.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy looks at him with narrowed eyes. He frowns, and fidgets, and looks away and back again. Booker shifts and curls into his lap like he knows something is bothering Jeremy. Michael watches it, waiting. When a full two minutes go by with Jeremy only managing to get a few ‘well’s and ‘um’s out, Michael rolls his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Whatever you’re thinking, just say it. Bet I already know what it is.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy deflates. He sighs, looking apologetic. Wide eyed, just like his cat. “It doesn’t sound like there’s anything we’ll be able to find. I mean, I know you’ve been looking into Fazbear Entertainment too, and you’re basically at a stalemate there, too, but at least with Fazbear Entertainment there’s a paper trail. It really doesn’t sound like there’s anything to go on with your friend. But I think you already knew that.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I did, but it doesn’t make me any happier. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Michael snorts. “Alright, fine. So we look into the sentient robots?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Or the murders the sentient robots claim happened.” Jeremy suggests. “I think a lot of what we look into will end up being the same no matter what topic we focus on, but the angle we look at it will definitely be different.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You some kind of academic or something?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy blinks. He cracks a smile. “Aca...demic?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah. You’re talking all official and shit. Like someone talking about an academic paper they’re getting ready to write.” Michael shakes his head. “Guess it makes sense, though.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy laughs humorlessly. “If we do it methodically, we don’t have to go back and try to figure out what we’ve missed. Hopefully. And I’ve basically told you everything important about my experiences, so… since we’re going off yours-- your friend’s, sorry-- I’m going to need you to tell me everything you possibly can.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right.” Michael says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>You gonna tell him about me?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Not-Gavin asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Not in a million years, Not-Gavin.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Michael thinks back to him. “Look, I really don’t know that much about what happened when he was working. He didn’t tell me. But I told you what my girlfriend and I saw over text.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy shakes his head. “You gave me an overview of that. I don’t care if it was only five minutes long. I want every single detail you can remember, including as exact wording as possible. Same as whatever your friend told you- even what you remember him acting like when he wasn’t trying to tell you about it. Even the smallest detail could be important.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Even the smallest detail, Micool-Boi.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>After telling Jeremy all about his, Lindsay’s, and Gavin’s personal experiences, Michael moves on to everything he’d found during his search. Which, not much, honestly. A lot of conspiracy theories-- Fazbear Entertainment is a front for murderers (okay, but is this one really wrong? People have definitely died at at least two locations), the animatronics are actually people in suits (if children’s bodies were hidden inside some of the animatronics, is this one wrong, either?), and a thousand others ranging from supernatural to downright ridiculous. Not a lot of cold, hard, facts about the company.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll admit, I never really bothered to try to look into the company before. I’ve had a lot on my mind, and honestly I didn’t want whatever lawsuit they might try to give me if I spoke up about what I experienced.” Jeremy says, not for the first time. “But I guess I didn’t realize just how much shit there is about Fazbear Entertainment. It’s impossible to tell what’s- what’s creepypasta and what’s the truth!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael raises an eyebrow. “Creepypasta? What do noodles have to do with this?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy snorts. “No, I mean the kind of thing that Slenderman is. You know slenderman?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Creepypastas are basically horror stories that get copy and pasted around the internet. They’re usually written by the original author in a way that’s meant to feel ambiguous-- yeah, everyone knows Slenderman, The Rake, Jeff the Killer, Ben Drowned and all the rest aren’t real, but when you read the stories about those things they’re all written like someone actually experienced them. You know?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sure.” Michael says, not at all sure. But he’s at least heard of Slenderman and Ben Drowned and gets the concept of those, so he can suss out the rest of the meaning.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy continues, petting Booker absentmindedly. “I think there’s a literal website for creepypasta. Well, actually, probably more. But my point is-- everything we find on Fazbear Entertainment is either vague or fake-sounding, or just a straight up conspiracy with no foothold. But of course there aren’t any footholds-- there’s almost nothing about this company on the internet! It’s just a vicious circle of nothingness. And if everyone that works at a location ends up threatened if they see something-- don’t say a thing or you’ll regret it-- there’s nothing to go on. Some of these message boards could have true stories on them, I mean. Whoever ‘Treyco’ and ‘Axial’ are, their stories seem pretty genuine to me. But we can’t say for certain because everyone treats Fazbear Entertainment like a horror legend instead of a real place.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael rubs his eyes, trying to process. “Okay,” he says slowly. “I get what you’re saying. Trust me, Lindsay and I came to that conclusion months ago. I remember Lindsay saying something about not being able to track down how long Fazbear Entertainment has even existed because all of the horror fiction and conspiracy that’s passed around. It just drowns out the real information.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, exactly. And if there’s someone out there trying to keep the real information from getting out-- just a theory right now, just go with it-- then letting the conspiracies run wild is the perfect way to cover things up. And even so, the internet hasn’t been around for that long. I mean, yeah, it’s been around since our parents were kids or whatever, but let’s face it. The internet as we know it? It picked up ten years ago. I don’t think we’re going to find much of a digital trail, to be honest.” Jeremy shakes his head. “We’d have better luck trying to follow a paper one. There’s got to be one.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael sighs. Outside, the sun shines as brightly as it can at the end of the afternoon. Not quite ready to begin to set, but past its prime. He runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah. There was probably something left at the location here, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to go in and look around. Especially not at night. I can show you the outside, though. Show you what Gavin did.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, sure. Well, actually, maybe tomorrow? There’s not much we’ll get out of just looking at the front of the building, you know? So if we wait tonight out, maybe do some preparations, then tomorrow we can go check out the place. Inside and out, look for any evidence that might be important.” Jeremy smiles at him, still with that eager, innocent expression on his face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It kind of reminds him of Gavin. He shuts that thought down immediately.</span>
  <em>
    <span> Gavin is a goofy idiot who lets his emotions get the best of him. Jeremy is-- Jeremy is still up to be seen. He’s smart, though. He doesn’t hide it like Gavin does.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Michael shakes his head. “Yeah, maybe. I have to work a double shift tonight and tomorrow night. I don’t think I’ll be up for much, but feel free to do some shit yourself. Don’t do anything stupid, though.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy acknowledges him with a short nod, attention already back on his laptop and whatever information is on it. “You work at six, right?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, it’s five right now. I don’t know how long you take to get ready before work, but you might want to at least eat something.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Two O'Clock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Michael gets done with work and collapses on the couch, as per usual. Jeremy is notably absent, but Booker has curled up on the top of the couch. He meows when he notices Michael, and Michael grunts back. And then he lays on his stomach for hours, passing between barely sleeping and completely wakeful.</p><p>It’s torture, and when Jeremy finally walks through the door Michael focuses on him. “Where have you been?”</p><p>Jeremy glances at him, apparently surprised. “You’re awake? Didn’t you work until six this morning?”</p><p>“Yeah. What about it?”</p><p>“...it’s nine. Shouldn’t you be asleep? It’s not fun, working with less than two hours of sleep.” Jeremy shrugs.</p><p>“Can’t sleep.” Michael rolls over onto his back. “I’ll deal. Where have you been?”</p><p>Jeremy sets down his shopping bags that Michael hadn’t actually noticed before. “Shopping. Thought I’d get a few things, food mostly. Y’know, because you’re playing host to me and all. I figure I can pay for food. I also got some stuff for defense, because if we’re definitely going to Freddy Fazbear’s with killer animatronics, I want to be prepared.”</p><p>Michael grunts. “You know, I don’t really know anything about you.”</p><p>Jeremy picks the shopping bags up again and heads to the kitchen. “I don’t really know anything about you, either. Maybe we should remedy that.”</p><p>Michael crawls off the couch and follows him. “Like how?”</p><p>Jeremy ponders it as he puts the groceries away. Michael doesn’t help him; his mind is swimming with half-made thoughts and pure tiredness. He tells Jeremy what food goes where with points and grunts when asked, but otherwise he watches and waits for Jeremy to tell him just how they’re going to get to know each other better.</p><p>Finally Jeremy speaks. “Do you like video games?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“What kind do you play? FPS games? Open world games? Mario games?”</p><p>Michael raises an eyebrow. “Mario is a genre all on its own, huh? Yeah, I’ll play just about anything, I guess. Lindsay likes animal crossing, but that’s not really my thing. I’ve played Minecraft before. GTA.”</p><p>Jeremy perks up. “Oh, you play Minecraft? I love Minecraft!”</p><p>“I’m not very good at it.” Michael warns. “I usually let Gavin do whatever he wants and play bodyguard to him. He knows how to play, don’t get me wrong. He just likes to fuck around.”</p><p>Jeremy laughs. It’s a full body laugh, and Michael can’t imagine having enough energy for something like that. “Oh, that’s great. When this is all over, we gotta play some games together. Play Siege or Valorant or something.”</p><p><em> I’d like that. </em> “Whatever you say, man. Just tell me this: what’s your opinion of the Zelda games?”</p><p>“Oh, I haven’t played them, to be honest. I guess I don’t have one?”</p><p><em> Oh, really? </em> “Well, looks like I’m teaching you to play them. There’s absolutely no way I’m associating with someone that’s never even tried them.”</p><p>“I’m more of a Spyro dude!” Jeremy protests. He grins.</p><p>Michael grins with him. “Is that where you get your fashion sense? You’re trying to be a dragon?”</p><p>Jeremy laughs again. It ends in an almost-squeak. “I would love to be a dragon. Seriously. No, my fashion sense has nothing to do with that. It’s a Borderlands reference.”</p><p>“Sure.” Michael says. “What kind of Borderlands reference?”</p><p>“My character. He wears orange, purple, and yellow and his name is Rimmy Tim.”</p><p>Michael laughs so hard his sides hurt. It’s so fucking stupid. Every single bit of it. When he finally catches his breath again, he looks Jeremy dead in the eye. “You know what? Fine. But that’s all I’m calling you from now on when you’re wearing that. Fucking Rimmy Tim.”</p><p>“No, I’m not Rimmy Tim. It’s something I could only aspire to be.” Jeremy grins at him.</p><p>“Yeah, but going by the same name makes you one step closer to being him!”</p><p>“I could never!” Jeremy puts a hand to his chest like an aghast 17th century lady. “I can have a moniker, sure. But not Rimmy Tim.”</p><p>Michael snickers. “Yeah, sure, Jeremy. I’m calling you Monster Truck instead. You’re fucking built like one.”</p><p>Jeremy puffs his chest out. “I can deal with that. I am Monster Truck!” He beats his chest with his fist and Michael has the distinct thought of King Kong doing the same. “What’s your moniker, then?”</p><p>“Uh, Mogar.”</p><p>Jeremy’s laugh is so high pitched Michael’s sure only dogs can hear it. “What the hell is a Mogar?” He squeals.</p><p>“It’s an unstoppable warrior, obviously.” Michael says, keeping the deadpan tone going. </p><p>He can’t keep it up for long, and finally cracks, laughing along with Jeremy like an idiot. For a while they sit in companionable silence. The window over the sink is open, letting in the sounds of chirping birds. Michael closes his eyes and enjoys it.</p><p>Finally Jeremy gets up to make coffee and Michael busies himself with smashing a few ants that have decided to take up residence on his counter. One, two, and three, all gone with only the effort it takes to move his hand and set it down. He wipes his hand on his pants.</p><p>“Dude, I gotta take a shower.”</p><p>Jeremy looks at him quizzically. “Okay?”</p><p>“If you have to use the bathroom you better do it now.” Michael shakes his head. “My hair’s a mess. I’ll take a while in the bathroom.”</p><p>Jeremy cracks a smile. “You didn’t strike me as the kind of person that put effort into their hair, Michael.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, it’s thick and curly. If I want to get a brush through it it takes some time.”</p><p>Jeremy chuckles. He shakes his head. “No, I’m good. You go ahead.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Three O'Clock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Michael gets home from work at six-thirty in the morning and immediately heads to his room. Jeremy is still asleep on the couch, so Michael has no choice but to disrupt his normal routine and go to his bed instead. The moment his head hits the pillow he’s out like a light. Somehow he manages to sleep solidly without any dreams at all.</p>
<p>It’s actually kind of nice. No insomnia, no racing heartbeat. No nightmares that he barely remembers when he wakes up. Not even a busy mind to keep him awake until he finally, finally collapses from the exhaustion he’s been living with for months.</p>
<p> But when he finally wakes up at noon, almost six (absolutely wonderful) hours later and joins Jeremy in the living room, he can instantly tell something is wrong. Jeremy just has a look on his face-- pensive, concerned. He looks up at Michael and the frown deepens. Michael debates waiting for Jeremy to come out with it, but decides against it when he remembers that Jeremy seems to have a problem getting sensitive information out.</p>
<p>“What?” Michael asks. He crosses his arms, still standing in the doorway, and waits.</p>
<p>Jeremy frowns, fidgets, and practically whines before he manages to speak. “So… two days ago Fazbear Entertainment put out a statement that all restaurants are closing. Immediately.”</p>
<p>“You’re saying they’ve all closed? All of the sudden?”</p>
<p>“Yep. Exactly that. I don’t know how we missed it, and to be fair we weren’t looking for recent news… but yeah. Every single location is now shut down permanently. They didn’t give any reasons why, either.” Jeremy fidgets more. “Strange it happens the moment we get together to investigate.”</p>
<p>“I doubt anyone is paying attention to us.” Michael walks over and sits on the couch next to Jeremy. “But if you think about it, it sounds like bad experiences have been growing. More people might be getting suspicious, more people getting threatened with lawsuits or whatever as they experience whatever killer animatronics their location has. So we get suspicious and start looking into it all, and more people are probably doing the same.”</p>
<p>“And so the best thing for Fazbear Entertainment to do is to shut everything down?” Jeremy wonders. “Why not just do things the right way?”</p>
<p>“Everything has to end eventually. You know what I mean? The worse everything gets the more people find out and the closer Fazbear Entertainment gets to closing permanently. They crested the hill for some reason or another and are now falling to their doom.” Michael crosses his arms.</p>
<p>“Surprisingly poetic.” Jeremy murmurs.</p>
<p>Michael snorts. The thought of him being poetic is ridiculous. He’s a realist. Nothing more, nothing less. <em> Poetic. </em> Beside him, Jeremy sighs.</p>
<p>“Oh, you know what’s even weirder?”</p>
<p>“Butter soda?”</p>
<p>Jeremy ignores him. Michael takes it as a sign that Jeremy’s actually trying to be serious about something. “There’s a comment on this article-- the one about the closings?-- that says ‘Sucks this company couldn’t reach its 20th birthday’.”</p>
<p>“I thought they’ve been around since the 80’s?” Michael asks. Even so, he remembers several message boards talking about the ‘Fazbear Conspiracy’ where Fazbear Entertainment isn’t nearly as old as it pretends to be. He’s also seen just as many message boards dedicated to the opposite-- Fazbear Entertainment has been around forever, et cetera, et cetera.</p>
<p>“Yeah, they have… I mean, yeah, a lot of people are crazy conspiracy theorists, but it’s weird that someone would comment so confidently on an official article.”</p>
<p>“...Jeremy.” Michael says, deadpan. “People are fucking weirdos. They will comment anything, anywhere, at the drop of a hat. It means nothing.”</p>
<p>Jeremy makes that almost-whine in the back of his throat again. “Fine, whatever. But I’m remembering that name.”</p>
<p>“What name? John Doe? Steve Smith? What generic name did someone use to comment on an internet article? Or are the comments through Facebook? There’s a lot of those around.”</p>
<p>“Shut up.” Jeremy mutters, rolling his eyes. “No, it was one of those ‘write in whatever name you feel like’ ones. They put BM Vagabond. I swear I’ve seen that name before, though.”</p>
<p>“What the fuck is a Vagabond?”</p>
<p>“Uh, a vagrant, I think. Someone who wanders.”</p>
<p>“Sounds great.” Michael reaches over to pet Booker, halfway absentmindedly. He doesn’t like cats, really, but he also doesn’t dislike them. They’re nothing special. But it’s kind of nice, running his hands through Booker’s soft fur. A nice distraction.</p>
<p>“Oh, someone commented on the comment, too!” Jeremy says, suddenly. He glances at Michael. Excitement dances in his eyes. “The page automatically reloaded.”</p>
<p>“What’s it say?”</p>
<p>“It says ‘Not the only entity that never reached its 20th’”</p>
<p><em> That’s freaky. </em>Not-Gavin says.</p>
<p>“Who wrote it?”</p>
<p>“Someone called Plan_G.”</p>
<p>“Huh. If you’re sure this is something important, go ahead and keep an eye on it, then.” Michael shakes his head. “It’s just more conspiracy theories. What we actually need to take away from this is that all locations are closed.”</p>
<p>Jeremy nods. There’s still a look of contemplation on his face. “Might make things harder now. We can’t just go to another location and look into things there. Not to say we would’ve anyway, but now we don’t even have the option.”</p>
<p>“We don’t know we would’ve needed that. No reason to think about it.” Michael says. “We still have the location here to check out.”</p>
<p>“True.” Jeremy says. “We should make a plan. Are you up for that yet, or…?”</p>
<p>Michael shakes his head. As rested as he feels, he also feels like old grease and sweat. And he hadn’t actually eaten the night before going to work. “Let me eat and shower first.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>***</p>
<p> </p>
<p>An hour later finds them planning a siege. At least, it feels like a siege with the way Jeremy pulls out a list to read from and reference. Michael watches him look through it with a raised eyebrow.</p>
<p>“So clearly fire is some sort of a weakness, because they definitely stopped trying to kill your friend once the fire started.” Jeremy says, grabbing and holding up a lighter. “And when you threatened them with a lighter it seemed to intimidate them. So we’ll bring a lighter and even a small blowtorch, just to be sure. You have a hammer, so we can bring that, too.”</p>
<p>“I get the blowtorch. You take the hammer.” Michael says.</p>
<p>“I’m good with that. Hopefully we won’t need them, because we’re just looking for information. So we also need to bring some bags to put everything we might find in. Files, random papers, even some sort of artifact might be helpful.”</p>
<p>Michael rolls his eyes. “Artifact?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know! I’m trying to think of everything, okay? I can bring my bag, do you have one or do you need to borrow one?” Jeremy scowls good-naturedly at him.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I got one.”</p>
<p>“Okay, next question: do you know where the staff room is? Manager’s office? Something like that?”</p>
<p>Michael thinks about the day he went in with Gavin. He’d almost immediately returned to his car to wait, but it hadn’t stopped him from noticing the employee-only room that Gavin and the manager-- Benjamin? Wasn’t the manager’s name Benjamin?-- had gone into. He doubts there’s any Manager’s Office, then. The Manager would’ve brought Gavin there.</p>
<p>“There’s an employee-only room right off the main room. What did your location have?”</p>
<p>Jeremy frowns. “Oh, there was a Manager’s Office, and a staff office, and a janitorial closet… I got the end of a hall, naturally. I don’t know what there was before the renovations, though.” Jeremy takes a sip of his coffee. “So, we head to the employee-only room, check inside. Do you remember if there was still a door after the fire?”</p>
<p>“Definitely. It was made of steel, I think. But it should be able to keep the animatronics out if we need it. But I don’t want to trap ourselves in the room with no escape, either.” Michael runs a hand through his hair, feeling the snarled curls fight against his fingers.</p>
<p>“Well, there’s probably a vent in the room.” Jeremy says. “But… eh, nevermind.”</p>
<p>Michael doesn’t bother to ask what he was going to say. If it was important, he would’ve said it. Instead he stands. “I’ll go get my bag. And the hammer.”</p>
<p>His bag is shoved under his bed with a thousand other odds and ends, though it isn’t covered in as many cobwebs as he thought it would be. He pulls it out and shakes it off. It doesn’t do much. With a sigh, he drops it to the floor again. It can be dusty. He doesn’t care. It looks pretty pathetic, actually, in a heap on the floor. <em> I’ll get it before I leave the room. </em> The hammer sits beside his bed. He’d taken it home after everything. Michael grabs it by the end of the handle.</p>
<p>Other than the bag and the hammer, there’s absolutely nothing that could be useful. Just dirty clothes and old cologne bottles and a small, overflowing trash can that he should really take care of. So he picks up his bag and rejoins Jeremy.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Four O'Clock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is no less creepy during the day than it is at night. It’s almost creepier, knowing that the place doesn’t need darkness to be frightening. They’d walked the entire way, not interested in leaving Michael’s car outside the restaurant. Michael adjusts his bag over his shoulder. He’s hidden the lighter in his pocket and the blowtorch pinned between his arm and his stomach inside his jacket. There was no fucking way he was hiding it in his bag until they got into the building. Too risky. But someone walking down the street carrying a blowtorch isn’t exactly innocuous-looking.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy whistles. “Wow, this place looks terrible.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, ‘cause it burned.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not all of it.” Jeremy shakes his head. “Come on. You first. You have the blowtorch out.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy had kept the hammer in his bag, just because it’s harder to hide on his person than Michael’s blowtorch. So Michael has to go in first, blowtorch at the ready, to make time for Jeremy to get the hammer out if needed. He ignores the hammering of his heart, and walks to the door. He steps over broken glass and into the building.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck.” He mutters. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I don’t want to be here.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy turns his flashlight on. Even though the sunlight outside has easy access into the dining area from the doors, the corners are still dark and dangerous-looking. He shines his flashlight to the stage-- where there are no animatronics to be found. “Where’s the employee-only room?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Over there.” Michael gestures to the door. “It seems pretty empty in here. I don’t want to know where the animatronics are hiding. Let’s go.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They creep over. Soot and ash makes the floor fairly slippery, and Michael remembers his slip when he and Lindsay had broken in before. At least he doesn’t slip this time. The door is closed tight. Michael stands watch as Jeremy messes with the door until it opens. The employee-only room is, of course, pitch black. It’s pretty small, though, and just takes Jeremy a quick sweep around to prove there’s no animatronics hiding.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wow. It doesn’t even look like this room was touched.” Jeremy remarks. He passes Michael his flashlight and takes another out of his bag. “Guess the room must’ve been sealed tight.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael stays by the door, looking out. But there’s nothing to be seen that he hasn’t already, and still no animatronics make themselves known. Behind him, Jeremy rustles around. He hits one of the filing cabinets.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey Michael?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you know how to pick locks?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael looks back at him, squinting through the flashlight pointed at him. “You mean you didn’t think of that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I- no, I forgot.” Jeremy frowns. “Uh, we could try to blow it open or something? I could hit it with the hammer until it breaks?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’ll be kind of loud.” Michael says. He looks back into the dining area. “Do it anyway. I’ll close the door.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy pushes the filing cabinet onto its side. It hits the floor with a loud bang, and Michael winces.  As it turns out, hitting a filing cabinet as hard as possible with a hammer is louder. By Jeremy’s third-- but successful-- swing, Michael claps his hands over his ears. It takes six swings for the side and top of the filing cabinet to bend enough that Jeremy can get his hands into the top drawer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So.” Jeremy says, looking at Michael. There’s a small smile on his face. “There’s no way I’m getting this drawer out. But I can fit my hand into it well enough. Feels like there’s just paper in here, too. That’s bendable.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sure is.” Michael says. “Go on, then.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The first thing Jeremy pulls out is a thick manila folder. He hands it to Michael. Michael takes it and opens it. He flips through the pages, skimming around. Looks like an employee file, really, and he takes note of the name-- Jack Pattillo. With a grunt, Michael puts the file in his bag. Might come in handy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They go like that for a while, skimming through each and every file from the top drawer. They’re all employee files, and from what Michael can tell, all relatively recent. Within the last two decades, at least. He doesn’t check all the dates. Every single file goes into his bag.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Alright. I’m gonna have to try for the next drawer.” Jeremy says, standing. He grabs the hammer again. “This one’s empty.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Go ahead.” Michael says. He glances at the door again. Closed, silent.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The second drawer is harder to get to, if only because it’s in the center.  But Jeremy manages it, panting with every swing. It bends just enough for Jeremy to squeeze his hand in. Michael watches him struggle for a minute before he pulls out a very mangled manila folder. Jeremy gives him a sheepish look.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think they’re going to be any straighter than this.” He says, handing it to Michael.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not the end of the world.” Michael flips through it. More employee files. “How many people have been employed here? There’s been at least fifty of these already.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, yeah. There’s probably like fifty people that work at these places in just one year. I can’t imagine they keep employees for long.” Jeremy says. He hands Michael a few more files.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shockingly, the next file he opens is Gavin’s. Michael thumbs through it. It’s simple enough, probably because he only worked here for a week. His name, age, and address are all written down. Allergies, too-- apparently Gavin is allergic to shellfish. Something else catches his eye, though. Medical history. It’s not detailed, not in the slightest. But the four words that are written are shocking enough.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>METAL PLATE IN HEAD</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I didn’t know that,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Michael thinks. </span>
  <em>
    <span>How did I not hear about that when he was in the hospital? He has a metal plate? What happened? Why didn’t he tell me about it?</span>
  </em>
  <span> He shakes his head. Of course Gavin didn’t tell him. It was probably traumatic, whatever happened, and he has no reason to tell anyone about it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Found Gavin’s.” Michael says finally.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy looks up from his own file. “Yeah? Anything interesting in it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael looks back at the file and continues looking through it. “Uh, he apparently has a metal plate in his head. And, uh, it looks like someone marked here that he’s a flight risk? Because he came in to talk with the manager.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Bet that was in my file, too. I definitely tried to tell the managers what was happening.” Jeremy says. He shrugs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael hums and shoves the rest of the files in his hands into his bag. “Wanna bet the rest of this filing cabinet is just employee information?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We should check just in case, though.” Jeremy says. He hands the rest of the files to Michael, who puts them in his rapidly growing bag.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The third drawer is, shockingly, full of employee information. Michael puts all of them in his bag, filling it to the brim, and turns to Jeremy. “Do we try the other two? There’s got to be something in them.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah.” Jeremy says. He picks the hammer up again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael shakes his head and reaches forward. “Give me the hammer. My turn.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re sure? I can do it-- it’s not that hard, Michael.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Give it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy is a fucking liar. It’s absolutely hard. By the time Michael manages to get access to the top cabinet he’s sweating buckets. “This would be so much easier if this was an actual sledgehammer.” He wheezes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re telling me.” Jeremy says. “Can you get your hand in there or do I have to do it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nah, I think I have it.” Michael shoves his hand into the gap and closes his fist around yet another manila folder. He tugs, remembering the force Jeremy had had to use, and promptly slams his fist into the cold, hard, metal. Pain lances up his arm and into his shoulder like white-hot fire. His hand goes numb. “Fuck!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy laughs, high pitched and unrestrained. Michael tries again to pull his fist out, though this time he does it much slower. But his fist hits the metal again. He twists, trying to find a better angle. No luck.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What the fuck.” He growls, annoyed. He tries again. Maybe he can just try to squeeze his fist tighter…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Michael, stop! I don’t think you’re going to get your hand out like that.” Jeremy says in-between giggles.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then how the hell and I supposed to get this shit out of here? I’m not letting go of it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy wipes his eyes. “You’re like a fucking… raccoon or some shit. I think your hands are too big. Let me try.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With another growl, Michael lets go of the folder. His hand slips out pretty easily after that. He rubs it, checking for blood or bruising, as Jeremy tries to do it himself. After a moment of finagling, he pulls out a folder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ta-da!” Jeremy says, offering it to Michael.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, fuck you.” Michael takes the folder. “Fuck, that hurt.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I can tell. What’s that one say?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael opens the folder and reads the first page. Well, there’s not that much to read, actually. “It looks like floorplans.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy brightens. “Great! Put it in my bag, I’ll work on getting the rest out.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael does as told. Jeremy hands him more files, which Michael takes quick looks at just to be sure they haven’t found a gem in the middle of rocks, but no-- none of them are employee files. Michael spots more floorplans, insurance claims, and other corporate-looking bullshit that makes his eyes hurt. When the drawer is cleaned out, Michael takes the hammer and beats the shit out of the cabinet. The next two drawers seem to have the same type of information; it all goes into Jeremy’s bag.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The third and final filing cabinet is… empty. They don’t realize it until Michael goes to push it over and nearly follows it to the ground. He catches himself and straightens. “That was unexpected.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wonder why it's there if it’s empty?” Jeremy wonders. He scratches his head. “Think it ever had anything in it in the first place?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Could’ve been a placeholder.” Michael says. He nudges it with his foot. “Uh… what now? Leave?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Actually… I kind of want to see the security office, if you’re up for it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael glances at the door. He’d gotten out of here alive once. Gavin had managed it multiple times. He’s better prepared this time, and besides-- there’s been no sign of the animatronics yet. They can do it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sure.” Michael hands Jeremy the hammer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy takes it, hoists his bag over his shoulder, and holds his flashlight with his other hand. Michael copies him, picking the blowtorch back up. He readies it as Jeremy swings the door open, but no animatronics leap to greet them. Moving back into the dining area, Michael realizes it’s still completely empty.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is weird.” Michael says. “They’re not even interested in us.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thought you said that last time they didn’t appear until you got to the security room?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They didn’t. But they were at least on stage.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But the security room is also empty. Exactly as he and Lindsay left it. Michael sweeps his flashlight around the desk, but there really isn’t anything interesting to see. Jeremy heads to the desk and opens the drawers. He pulls out a few papers and flips through them. Michael turns away and looks out one door. Nothing creeps down the hall to terrorize them. He checks the other hallway. It’s as empty as can be. He turns back to Jeremy.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Find anything?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nothing.” Jeremy says. He sounds disappointed. “I’d hoped there would be something, but there really isn’t-- why is there a cupcake?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s Gavin’s.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael looks back to the cupcake. It looks almost exactly the same, if a little worse for wear. No bugs have gotten to it. It doesn’t even look moldy. Just bright pink with googly eyes set into the now-hard frosting.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lindsay made cupcakes one night and Gavin brought one to work. Guess he did that to it.” Michael says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It looks like Chica’s cupcake.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She has a cupcake?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, yeah. At my old location at least. Dunno about here. You know, my old location also had a phone. I think it took all sorts of calls, but someone on the day shift would record me messages to listen to during my shifts. Well, the first week. I wonder…” Jeremy trails off. He pokes at the phone for a moment. “I think it still works. We should take it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why?!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because if anything’s been recorded with this phone, we might still be able to access it, so long as it has power to it.” Jeremy says. He reaches behind the phone and pulls the power cord out. “Luckily these old phones are pretty easy to take apart.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael rolls his eyes and waits for Jeremy to find a place in his bag for the phone. He glances out the hallways again, but there’s still nothing. He doesn’t like the stone that’s settled in his stomach.</span>
  <em>
    <span> What’s happened to the animatronics? Where did they go?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Alright, I’m ready to leave. You?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thought you’d never ask.” With that, Michael leads the way.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>What's this? A surprise update? Sure is! And where have the animatronics gone? Without anyone to visit during the day, they must've gotten bored...</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Five O'Clock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>How’s everything going?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael types out a text to Lindsay and sends it after a moment of consideration. He turns to Jeremy. “Any luck sorting that?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy stifles a laugh. “It’s going fine. What about you? Got that phone hooked up yet?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Just about.” Michael scowls at the phone. All he’d needed was an electrical hookup. Ten dollars at Walmart, ten minutes to hook up, so long as you know what you’re doing. Thankfully Michael does. “Damn near electrocuted myself, though.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This time Jeremy doesn’t bother stifling his laugh. “Just let me know when it’s set. I’m excited to see if there’s anything on it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It only takes a few minutes to get the last of it set up. The phone makes a clicking sound as it turns on, and Jeremy looks over as he hears it. He says something, but Michael gets distracted by his phone. Lindsay’s text tone. Michael turns his phone on to check her answer.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh, it’s going! Don’t worry, though, it’s all under control. Sorry for my sporadic answering, I’m pretty busy around here. Love you! Everything going alright over there?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Oh, yeah. Everything is just fine. Michael looks around. There’s stacks of files across the floor, employee files sorted by year, and the rest of the corporation files all sorted by Jeremy’s own system. They’ve stolen a phone that may or may not have anything on it. He almost electrocuted himself hooking it up.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Just fine. Missing you.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy appears beside him. “Ready to check the phone out?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Be my guest.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy pokes at the phone for a moment, pressing buttons. Some of them make noise when pressed, little dings and beeps. Finally Jeremy seems to find what he was looking for. “Ha!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The phone rings. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Hello, hello? Uh, I wanted to record a message for you to help you get settled in on your first night. Um, I actually worked in that office before you. I'm finishing up my last week now, as a matter of fact</span>
  </em>
  <a href="https://genius.com/Phone-guy-five-nights-at-freddys-1-phone-calls-annotated#note-13710388">
    <em>
      <span>.</span>
    </em>
  </a>
  <em>
    <span> So, I know it can be a bit overwhelming, but I'm here to tell you there's nothing to worry about. Uh, you'll do fine. So, let's just focus on getting you through your first week. Okay?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael glances at Jeremy. Jeremy grins at him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The person on the phone continues. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Uh, let's see, first there's an introductory greeting from the company that I'm supposed to read. Uh, it's kind of a legal thing, you know. Um, "Welcome to Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. A magical place for kids and grown-ups alike, where fantasy and fun come to life. Fazbear Entertainment is not responsible for damage to property or person. Upon discovering that damage or death has occurred, a missing person report will be filed within 90 days, or as soon property and premises have been thoroughly cleaned and bleached, and the carpets have been replaced.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy sucks in a breath. “Wow, they really don’t hold back, huh? This is way more gruesome than the ones I listened to.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael rolls his eyes and waits for the rest. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Blah blah blah, now that might sound bad, I know, but there's really nothing to worry about. Uh, the animatronic characters here do get a bit quirky at night, but do I blame them? No. If I were forced to sing those same stupid songs for twenty years and I never got a bath? I'd probably be a bit irritable at night too. So, remember, these characters hold a special place in the hearts of children and we need to show them a little respect, right? Okay.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“So, just be aware, the characters do tend to wander a bit. Uh, they're left in some kind of free roaming mode at night. Uh...Something about their servos locking up if they get turned off for too long. Uh, they used to be allowed to walk around during the day too. But then there was The Bite of '87.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael remembers seeing things about a bite. Not much, only a few web articles that frankly, didn’t look very official. Even with the photos of the apparent original newspaper pages, they had struck Michael as fake. Like most things associated with Fazbear Entertainment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe that’s what they want you to think. Hear too many conspiracy theories and then when you read something real you just think of it as another story. Not truth.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Not-Gavin says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The phone guy continues. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Yeah. I-It's amazing that the human body can live without the frontal lobe, you know? Uh, now concerning your safety, the only real risk to you as a night watchman here, if any, is the fact that these characters, uh, if they happen to see you after hours probably won't recognize you as a person. They'll p-most likely see you as a metal endoskeleton without its costume on. Now since that's against the rules here at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, they'll probably try to...forcefully stuff you inside a Freddy Fazbear sui</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>t.</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Gavin was dealing with this from night one?” Michael mutters. “I mean, I guess it’s better to tell him what to expect than not tell him anything, but…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He should’ve been told before he accepted the job.” Jeremy finishes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Um, now, that wouldn't be so bad if the suits themselves weren't filled with crossbeams, wires, and animatronic devices, especially around the facial area. So, you could imagine how having your head forcefully pressed inside one of those could cause a bit of discomfort...and death. Uh, the only parts of you that would likely see the light of day again would be your eyeballs and teeth when they pop out the front of the mask, heh. Y-Yeah, they don't tell you these things when you sign up. But hey, first day should be a breeze. I'll chat with you tomorrow. Uh, check those cameras, and remember to close the doors only if absolutely necessary. Gotta conserve power. Alright, good night.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With that, the recorded message ends. Jeremy looks at him. “Uh, do you need to process that, or are you ready to listen to the next? There’s probably five. That’s how many I got.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael shakes his head. His mind is swimming from the information, his hands sweaty. But he has to know. “Go ahead and play the next.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy presses the button again. The phone rings. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Uhh, Hello? Hello? Uh, well, if you're hearing this and you made it to day two, uh, congrats! I-I won't talk quite as long this time since Freddy and his friends tend to become more active as the week progresses. Uhh, it might be a good idea to peek at those cameras while I talk just to make sure everyone's in their proper place. You know… Uh... Interestingly enough, Freddy himself doesn't come off stage very often. I heard he becomes a lot more active in the dark though, so, hey, I guess that's one more reason not to run out of power, right?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I-I also want to emphasize the importance of using your door lights. There are blind spots in your camera views, and those blind spots happen to be right outside of your doors. So if-if you can’t find something, or someone, on your cameras, be sure to check the door lights. Uh, you might only have a few seconds to react... Uh, not that you would be in any danger, of course. I'm not implying that.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Also, check on the curtain in Pirate Cove from time to time. The character in there seems unique in that he becomes more active if the cameras remain off for long periods of time. I guess he doesn't like being watched. I don't know. Anyway, I'm sure you have everything under control! Uh, talk to you soon.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Explains the flashlights on the chair.” Michael says. “Uses less power, he doesn’t have to reach for the doors just to check them.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy nods. When he speaks, his voice is almost hoarse. “Foxy sounds like a bastard. Just like Mangle.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael side-eyes him. “Aren’t they the same?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, that’s my point.” Jeremy reaches forward and presses the button again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The phone rings. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>Hello, hello? </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>Hey you're doing great! Most people don’t last this long. I mean, you know, they usually move on to other things by now. I'm not implying that they died. Th-th-that’s not what I mean. Uh, anyway I better not take up too much of your time. Things start getting real tonight.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Like they hadn’t before?” Michael says, incredulous. “You warned him about the possibility of death on the first night!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Uh... Hey, listen, I had an idea: if you happen to get caught and want to avoid getting stuffed into a Freddy suit, uhh, try playing dead! You know, go limp. Then there's a chance that, uh, maybe they’ll think that you're an empty costume instead. Then again if they think you're an empty costume, they might try to... stuff a metal skeleton into you. I wonder how that would work. Yeah, never mind, scratch that. It's best just not to get caught. Um... Ok, I'll leave you to it. See you on the flip side!”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sounds similar to the advice they gave to me. Did I tell you they gave me a head, told me to wear it if an animatronic got inside?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael nods. “Yeah. Play the next one.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy does. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Hello, hello? Hey! Hey, wow, day 4. I knew you could do it.Uh, hey, listen, I may not be around to send you a message tomorrow. It's-It's been a bad night here for me. Um, I-I'm kinda glad that I recorded my messages for you, uh, when I did.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael freezes as he hears the sounds of banging. And… screeching? He looks around, half expecting an animatronic to appear out of nowhere, but of course they don’t. He looks back at the phone. It’s coming from the recording. The man recording these messages didn’t make it out alive, did he?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Uh, hey, do me a favor. Maybe sometime, uh, you could check inside those suits in the back room? I'm gonna to try to hold out until someone checks. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Uh, I-I-I-I always wondered what was in all those empty heads back there.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The sound of a music box playing fills the air. Michael holds his breath. It’s a haunting melody, almost echoing through the phone. And achingly familiar. Freddy’s music box.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You know…” </span>
  </em>
  <span>The phone guy trails off as something moans, low and pained.</span>
  <em>
    <span> “oh, no--”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then it’s a mishmash of sounds-- mechanical screeching and screaming, of metal on metal and broken voiceboxes. The music box plays the melody of simple chimes. Something speaks in a warped, deep voice.Then it all cuts out with the sound of static. The recording ends.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael swallows. He clenches his hands together, trying to stop the shaking. Sweat runs down the back of his neck, feeling like a bug skittering around. He clenches his teeth and sucks in forceful gulps of air. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I just listened to someone die. I’ve been in that room. I’ve met those animatronics. What’s so special about me? Did I just get lucky?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I just listened to someone die, and I don’t even know their name.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael forces himself to look at Jeremy. But Jeremy seems to be taking it even worse: his entire body shakes with fear, his skin has gone pale and clammy. His eyes are blown wide open.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jeremy?” Michael croaks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy doesn’t seem to hear, still staring at something that isn’t there. Michael tries again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jeremy. Jeremy!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy jerks, throwing his hands up. Michael grabs his wrists before any punches can be thrown. He really doesn’t want to get accidentally socked in the jaw. It’s been a bad enough day as it is.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jeremy, calm down!” Michael hisses. Jeremy freezes. “Look, I don’t know what kind of memory hell that recording sucked you into, but you aren’t in any danger. We’re in my apartment!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It takes five minutes for Jeremy to calm down enough for Michael to feel comfortable leaving him alone. Michael walks to the kitchen on his own shaky knees and searches around in the cupboard. He’d bought chamomile tea bags, before Gavin had disappeared. For Gavin. Gavin had claimed it was calming. It takes about five minutes to find the box, because admittedly he’d never actually used it. He follows the directions on the box. Usually he wouldn’t even think about it, but… it’s supposed to be calming. He might as well do it right. He brings out the finished mugs and hands one to Jeremy, still sitting on the floor.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Here.” He says. Jeremy takes it. Michael’s glad to see he’s not shaking as badly as before. It wouldn’t be a good idea to take a mug full of hot liquids just to spill it all over. “Let’s… take a break. Maybe finish this tomorrow.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy doesn’t answer. Michael doesn’t blame him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Michael listens to the last recording when Jeremy goes out for a walk. There’s no talking, not really. Just a garbled, demonic-sounding voice in otherwise silence. How the phone recorded it, Michael doesn’t know. Maybe one of the animatronics pressed the button and spoke. But it’s nothing that makes sense, and he doesn’t tell Jeremy.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“You know what’s weird?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“How many times you’ve said that to me since we’ve met?” Michael raises an eyebrow, looking pointedly at Jeremy. He tries very hard not to roll his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy decides to be childish and stick his tongue out. Which, he is seventeen. It’s still a bit overboard for Michael’s taste. “No, the fact that every single one of these employee files are from less than twenty years ago. I mean, the earliest I’ve seen is from two-thousand five.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael frowns. He looks at his own file. The date says she was hired in twenty-twelve.  “Maybe they didn’t want to keep any from before this century. What use would they have? And besides, I can’t even see any reason to keep these files in the first place.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But then why are there none from two-thousand to two-thousand five? They just start at two-thousand five!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Maybe that’s when this location opened? I don’t know!” Michael tries to keep the annoyance from his voice. There’s nothing really causing it. Nothing that Jeremy is responsible for, anyway. “Did you think of that? Maybe this location has only been open since two-thousand and five!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then where did the bite of eighty seven happen? Because the few sources we have point to this one. And the other thing-- the kids killed and stuffed into the animatronics. There’s literally no records of that. When did that happen? Within the last fifteen years?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know, Jeremy!” Michael yells. “I don’t know! Nothing seems to be helping! We’ve looked through like three fucking hundred of these and I’m not any closer to finding Gavin. What do you want me to fucking do?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy’s face goes dark. He scowls. “Stop being an ass, for one.” He mutters. “I haven’t done anything to deserve you taking your anger out on me and you know it. I know you’re frustrated, okay? I am too. Nothing makes sense. I’m just trying to think out loud. I might catch something you miss or vice-versa. We have literally no other options. We can either work together on this or go back to being alone.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I have Lindsay.” Michael says. It’s a petulant response. He doesn’t care.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lindsay is off doing her own thing, and definitely. Not. Here.” Jeremy snaps. “Yeah, I get it. Sick family. It’s important. Doesn’t ignore the fact that you are, in fact, alone. Except for me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>You’re alone, except for me.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The words twist around in Michael’s gut, tying it to knots. </span>
  <em>
    <span>All alone. Just me.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Michael swallows. He takes a deep breath in. When he breathes out, he lets the tightness in his muscles follow. “I’m… going for a walk.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn’t bother to listen for a response. He just stands and walks out the front door, pausing only to slip his shoes on. The air is still warm and humid, far hotter than Michael likes but is not unused to. He hardly notices it. He just stomps down the street and glares at anyone that walks by. </span>
  <em>
    <span>All alone, Mikey.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Little</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Itty</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Bitty</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Mikey</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Now where would you be without me? Alone in a hole with nobody to love him. You need me, and you better remember it. All you’ve got is me.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Michael growls and kicks a rock. He does not need to be reminded of his fucking asshole mother right now. Not with everything else happening.</span>
  <em>
    <span> I’m not alone. I’m not alone. I’m not alone.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He repeats the mantra. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I have friends. I have a life. It’s a little fucked up right now, but I’m not alone. Get lost, abusive fuck. I don’t need you.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He thinks about the few things Gavin’s mentioned about his family. A loving but stressed father, a dead mother. An older brother that was always off doing his own thing. He’d spent more time with babysitters than his own family, but he’d never blamed his father. He was just busy, providing for two sons.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gavin had always talked carefully about his family. Like he didn’t want to say too much, but felt he had to say something. Like he wasn’t sure what to say or how to say it. Michael hadn’t disbelieved him. He also hadn’t believed him. More likely Gavin had a lot of traumas he didn’t even realize. Losing a family member can do a lot to a person’s psych.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael’s unfortunately </span>
  <em>
    <span>intimately </span>
  </em>
  <span>aware of what trauma can do to a person. And now he’s taking it all out on Jeremy. Shit, they’re all fucked up, aren’t they? Stuck with shitty childhoods and surrounded by conspiracy theories that aren’t nearly as interesting as the real mystery.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael pulls out his phone and calls Lindsay.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Six O'Clock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Michael scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, uh, I’m sorry for being a shitty person.”</p><p>Jeremy blinks. “Hey, things are stressful. No biggie. One bad moment isn’t anything to talk about.”</p><p>“Yeah, still sorry.” Michael sighs.</p><p>“Well, I’m sorry too. I wasn’t exactly nice either.” Jeremy says.</p><p>Michael nods. The twisted feeling in his gut stays. “Did you find anything while I was out?</p><p>“Actually, I think I did.” Jeremy reaches for a small pile of files. “There are some files dealing with property rights, independent contractors, and stuff like that.”</p><p>“Okay?”</p><p>“Okay, and they each have a signature in common. More than likely from the owner. And nobody is going to know what’s going on with Fazbear Entertainment than the owner.”</p><p>Michael walks over and sits next to him. He pulls the file from Jeremy’s hands and scans it-- it’s something stupid about property rights-- and finds a set of signatures at the bottom.</p><p><em> Matt Hullum? </em> Not-Gavin says. <em> Or Gustavo Sorola? Wait, no-- Geoff Ramsey! </em></p><p>“Which one’s the one in common?” Michael asks, ignoring him.</p><p>“Ramsey. His signature’s all over the place. Well, his and someone named William Afton.” Jeremy hands him another paper. “See, both names are on here. And these-”</p><p>Jeremy hands him a stack and Michael shuffles through them. Another property rights, food licensing, a certificate from a health inspection, and a deed. All with the signature <em> Geoff Ramsey </em> , and all but the deed having <em>William Afton</em> written alongside. Michael finds himself staring at them not because of who they might be but because somehow, the signatures remind him of Gavin, as strange as it sounds. Gavin writes his ‘G’ the same way Ramsey does, and his last ‘e’ in ‘Free’ has just as long a tail as the ‘n’ in ‘Afton’.</p><p>Not-Gavin tuts. <em> How do you remember that? </em></p><p><em> I thought it was a weird British thing. </em>Michael answers despite himself. </p><p>He puts the files down. “So you want to look for Ramsey, then?”</p><p>Jeremy shrugs. “I mean… we aren’t exactly going anywhere looking into those murders… if they happened… so it seems like this is really our only lead.”</p><p><em> If they happened. </em> Not-Gavin says. He sounds like a petulant child, whiny and stuck up. <em> If you’d been there you’d understand. </em></p><p>“Well, get onto it. Something tells me finding Ramsey will be just as hard as everything else.” Michael stands up. He thinks of Lindsay’s words, tired and worn, as they talked on the phone.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “I know things are stressful right now. Just, be careful, okay?” Lindsay says. “You know he wouldn’t have said that if he knew.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Michael scowls, knowing she can’t see it but doing it anyway. “I know that! But he’s- he’s right, isn’t he? Gavin is gone, you’re busy, who else do I have? Jeremy. I have Jeremy.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> He kicks a rock as hard as he can and sends it flying down the sidewalk. It clatters into the street. In his ear, Lindsay sighs. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “You do have me. I know I’m not right there with you. But we’re talking, right now. I’m here for you. And besides that-- Jeremy doesn’t seem like that bad of a guy. I know I haven’t met him, but from what you’ve said he seems nice.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “And I just took out my frustrations on him.” Michael says. He rubs his face, hating how hot it feels and the way almost-tears have begun to form in the corners of his eyes. “Like a fucking asshole.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Like an overworked young adult, Michael. Dealing with the disappearance of his best friend and the knowledge that there are apparently sentient animatronics-- and a murder spree. Yeah, you were an asshole, and those are excuses. Apologize and don’t do it again. But excuses are still reasons, and reasons don’t come from nowhere.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “... do you think my mom ever felt bad about what she did?” Michael scowls at two people as they walk by, ogling him and not even trying to pretend they aren’t listening. They both look surprised, like they weren’t expecting him to notice. He glares until they walk across the road. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “I think your mom didn’t give a flying fuck. If she felt bad, she didn’t show it, and she never did anything to change-- so it doesn’t matter. She might have said that hitting you made you stronger. That making you feel small and insignificant was to protect you from the world. That you could only grow from what she did to you.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Michael sucks in a breath. He’d told Lindsay everything, of course, when they’d first gotten together and Michael had woken one night in a cold sweat, terrified out of his mind and so out of it that Lindsay had almost called an ambulance. But it still hurts to talk about it. It always will. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Lindsay continues. “But that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make her right. So no, it doesn’t matter. She hurt you, end of story.” </em>
</p><p>For what it’s worth, I don’t think Jeremy is all that angry with you. <em> Not Gavin speaks from nowhere. </em></p><p>Shut up,<em> Michael tells him. </em>We weren’t talking about Jeremy.</p><p><em> Michael imagines Not-Gavin shaking his head, with pursed lips and crossed arms. </em> I’m right, yeah?</p><p>
  <em> “Michael?” Lindsay asks. “You there?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Michael blinks. “Yeah. Got… distracted.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Well, it’s no wonder there. You’ve got a lot on your mind.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Michael rolls his eyes. “Yeah. I should go apologize to Jeremy, shouldn’t I?” </em>
</p><p>
  <em> “Probably. Chances are he understands, too.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>Michael groans as he closes another tab. No luck on anyone named William Afton-- not on Facebook, not on the news, not even in the obituary. If William Afton is a real person, they’ve done a lot to keep themself hidden. He glances at Jeremy. Jeremy had taken the task of finding Geoff Ramsey, and from the looks of it, is having about as hard of a time as Michael is.</p><p>“Think we should look at the message boards again? Maybe we missed something?” Michael suggests. He pushes his laptop off his lap, slouching sideways until he’s laying on the couch with his feet dangling off.</p><p>Jeremy glances at him from his place on the floor. “I doubt we missed anything… but we might be able to post something. Ask for information about the owner.”</p><p>Something else forms in the back of his mind. Absentmindedly, he scratches his head. “Hey, Jeremy?”</p><p>Jeremy raises an eyebrow. “What?”</p><p>“Have you checked the comments on that article lately? The one about the closings?”</p><p>Jeremy shakes his head. “Not since we first saw it, no.”</p><p>“Well, it’s been a few days.”</p><p>“You trying to tell me something, Michael? Thought you thought it was stupid.”</p><p>Michael stretches, hearing the bones in his neck crack and the ones in his shoulders right after. “Man, I don’t fucking know anymore. I’m so confused.”</p><p>For some reason it makes Jeremy laugh. He snorts, covering his mouth.</p><p>“What?” Michael asks.</p><p>“I don’t know what it was, but you saying that was just so funny.”</p><p>Michael frowns. “What, I’m so confused? I am! I’m confused. My brain wants to explode. You could interrogate me on what I know about Fazbear Entertainment and I could probably count the facts on my fingers. Of one hand!”</p><p>Jeremy laughs harder, falling into ‘squealing territory’. Michael rolls his eyes. “Look, are you going to see if anything else has happened in the comments or no? It’s the newest information we have.”</p><p>Jeremy takes a moment to compose himself. But after that, he pulls up the article and sits in front of the couch so Michael can see it. There are a few new comments that Michael can see, little things like ‘about time’ and ‘those are still open?’, and one shockingly nice one detailing someone’s birthday and how great it was. And then… nothing. There’s no sign of the comment thread.</p><p>“Did it get deleted?” Michael wonders.</p><p>Jeremy scrolls through the comments more. “It must have. It’s just not here. I don’t understand-- why those comments and nothing else?”</p><p>“Maybe the site didn’t like what they were insinuating? That or BM Vaga-whatevertheirnamewas deleted their comment, which deleted the whole thread.”</p><p>Something catches his eye-- not the comments they’re looking for, not even the same names- but something about it makes him pause. He puts his hand over Jeremy’s to keep him from scrolling.</p><p>“Look at that one.” He says.</p><p>Jeremy stares at him. “...which one?”</p><p>Michael points at it. Jeremy glances at it, then double takes.</p><p>“What the hell?” Jeremy says.</p><p>Best Michael can tell, it’s a song. Or a poem, but they’re basically the same thing when written down anyway. As Michael watches, Jeremy clicks ‘Read More’.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>We're breaking down your lights and doors</b>
</p><p>
  <b>But we can't promise you no more</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Are you happy to come back for five whole nights?</b>
</p><p>
  <b>You say you're sick of all your fears</b>
</p><p>
  <b>But you keep coming back around here</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Perhaps it's time for you to be one of us now</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Five! Nights! Five Nights at Freddy's</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Now it's the finale and you weren't ready</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Don't! Cry! We're not so scary</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Don't make a scene and we'll end this quickly</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Maybe you've just lost your mind</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Kicking and screaming, now you've lost your time</b>
</p><p>
  <b>But we all know you're said and done</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>It's been years, I've been alone in here</b>
</p><p>
  <b>I've forgotten what it's like for me to smell your fear</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Am I driving you insane?</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Am I eating at your brain?</b>
</p><p>
  <b>No happy endings will ever find you</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Your heavy breathing and pain will end soon</b>
</p><p>
  <b>You're picking up the pieces to the ghosts that will haunt you too</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>We're voices in your head</b>
</p><p>
  <b>We're monsters under your bed</b>
</p><p>
  <b>There's no tomorrow for you</b>
</p><p>
  <b>No matter what they said</b>
</p><p>
  <b>You know who you are</b>
</p><p>
  <b>And we know everything</b>
</p><p>
  <b>You've come so far</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Now you pull the strings</b>
</p><p>
  <b>That's right</b>
</p><p> </p><p>Jeremy is the first to speak. “That’s not creepy at all.” He mutters.</p><p>Michael swallows down a creeping feeling of dread. <em> It’s a song. Probably from some freak conspiracy theorist. </em> “Yeah, delete the vagueposts but keep the creepy-ass song.”</p><p>“You know, it’s not that bad. I mean, yeah it’s freaky as all hell but it’s written really well. It’s a little short… and doesn’t have a chorus… but it’s pretty good.” Jeremy says.</p><p>Michael looks at him. “You some kind of song connoisseur?”</p><p>Jeremy laughs softly. “No, I just like music.” He turns his attention back to the comment. “Well, whoever ‘The Brother’ is, they seem to know the truth about Fazbear Entertainment.”</p><p>“What makes you say that?” Michael feels like he’s missing the obvious with Jeremy saying that so casually.</p><p>“I mean, it’s clearly from the point of view of the animatronics, right? Breaking down lights and doors, talking about the night, isn’t it obvious? But I doubt any of the animatronics have access to the internet, so it must be from someone that knows the truth. Maybe even someone that’s run the night shift.” Jeremy shrugs. “If that wasn’t your first thought, what about it caught your attention?”</p><p>Michael blushes. What Jeremy says makes sense, in a reaching sort of way. There’s not many other reasons for a song like that to exist. Still… “It was the username.” He admits.</p><p>“‘The Brother’?” Jeremy asks. “That caught your attention?”</p><p>“I mean, I saw the giant comment! I didn’t see what it was, but the reason I wanted you to stop at first was because of the username.” Michael crosses his arms. It’s harder to do when he’s laying on the side, but he manages it.</p><p>“What about it sounds important?”</p><p>“Everyone else commenting either has weird-ass usernames or completely normal ones. Except for this guy, who just goes by ‘The Brother’? Of all the usernames they could’ve written in, they choose that. It sounds just like the vagueposting done between BM and Plan_G.” Michael hopes his face isn’t as red as it feels.</p><p>From the look on Jeremy’s face, it is. “I don’t think ‘The Brother’ as a username is as weird as you seem to think it is, but you still managed to find something to note. So, coincidence?” Jeremy shrugs. “And isn’t ‘The Brother’ the name of the evil people in 1984?”</p><p>“That’s Big Brother, Jeremy.”</p><p>“That reality show, then.”</p><p>“...Still Big Brother.”</p><p>Jeremy blinks. “Can we go back to ‘this was probably written by someone that worked at Fazbear Entertainment’?”</p><p>“What’s the use of it? It’s not like we can do anything with that information. We don’t know anyone that’s worked at Fazbear Entertainment.”</p><p>“Not personally.” Jeremy says. “But we’ve got a hell of a lot of employee files here.”</p><p><em> And you’ve met my manager, </em> Not-Gavin adds.</p><p>“Gavin’s manager.” Michael says. He sits up. “We need to talk to Gavin’s manager.”</p><p>“You think?”</p><p>“He knew some shit was going on. I know he did. We need to talk to him-- maybe he can at least point us in the direction of Ramsey.”</p><p>Michael stands up and stretches. Every muscle in his body feels tight, despite his stretching on the couch earlier. But the blood is pounding in his ears; he’s caught a thread, a purpose, and he’s going to follow it to the end.</p><p>“Tomorrow, you mean.”</p><p>“What?” Michael stops and looks back at Jeremy.</p><p>“Tomorrow. It’s getting late, and don’t you have to work tonight?”</p><p>Michael blinks. Right. Work. And he’s barely slept, now that he thinks about it. “Fuck work.” He says. “This is more important.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And we get some plot! And I wonder who this 'The Brother' is... Credit to Natewantstobattle for the song (The Finale)-- I only took a bit from it, but it's a good FNAF song, so check it out on Youtube! Stay tuned for next week's chapter!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Seven O'Clock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“His name is Benjamin. I don’t know his last name, but his file must be in here somewhere.” Michael shuffles files around, looking for the familiar name.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re forgetting one thing, Michael.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looks up. “What?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy raises an eyebrow. “There’s no reason to think he’ll want to talk to us.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So we threaten him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s how you get assault charges.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So we wear masks.” Michael picks up a file and flips it open. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Bingo. </span>
  </em>
  <span>“Found it.” He scans the pages until he finds the address. “He lives on the other side of town.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Michael.” Jeremy says, and suddenly the file is ripped from Michael’s hands. “Listen to yourself.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael scowls. “I know what I’m saying.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This is a line you don’t want to cross, I’m telling you. I know you’re desperate. But this is a human person, Michael. Even if you get away with it-- he never finds out who you are, you get the information you’re looking for, this will change you.” Jeremy frowns, concern written across his face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What do you think I’m going to do? Go from threatening someone to killing people?” Michael snarls. “Because believe me, those are way different.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He tries to snatch the files out of Jeremy’s hands, but Jeremy is faster. Michael growls, trying again, and he’s much less gentle about it. He misses, but instead of going for the file, he tries to kick Jeremy in the shin. And very suddenly he’s flat on his back on the floor with the breath knocked out of him. Michael coughs, sucking air through his clenched teeth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy appears in front of him. “I’m sorry Michael, but you need to take a minute and think about this. Really think about it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The fuck did you do to me?” Michael grits. Pain blooms across his chest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I hit you really, really hard.” Jeremy says. “Look, do you really think that a year ago you would’ve been willing to threaten someone just for information they might not even have?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael rubs his chest. “Michael from a year ago was a lot different from right now Michael.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Exactly.” Jeremy says. “Jeremy from a year ago was pretty different, too.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael pauses. “What do you mean?” He still doesn’t try to sit up; his chest hurts too much for that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jeremy from a year ago was homeless. He had his mother’s medical bills to pay off, a lifetime of grief to come to terms with, and knowledge that most of the world would call him crazy if he shared.” Jeremy sits beside him. “So he didn’t say no when he was offered a job. Rob this bank, they said. Just go to the vault and shovel as much money into his bag as he could. The other people in the crew will do the rest.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did it go wrong?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It went great. He didn’t have to do anything but carry money. And look at the faces of the terrified hostages, knowing it was him they were afraid of.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sounds like that Jeremy didn’t have anything to do with the hostages.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, sure. He just saw them when he went running past. With the very people who had threatened them.” Jeremy looks at him. There’s something shadowed in his eyes. “You don’t just do something like that, Michael. You have to turn off that part of your conscience to even live with yourself. I didn’t do anything to innocent people… that time.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There were other times?” Michael asks. Something heavy settles in his stomach, pinning him to the floor.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course there were. That crew decided they liked me, and I liked the money, even though I liked nothing else about the situation. So I did more jobs, usually the most pacifist job I could get. Staying away from the people that got caught up, out of the eyes of the police that tried to stop us. It didn’t always work. And I’ll never forget the time I chose my crew member over the security guard that was just doing his job.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ice. There’s ice in Michael’s veins, growing colder and colder and he can’t tell if he hates it or likes it. “You killed someone.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Never thought I would’ve.” Jeremy says. “But I changed, Michael. And I didn’t even see it happening. I don’t want that to happen to you. So I know you think that threatening the former manager of Fazbear Entertainment is justified-- and I’m not going to get into whether it is or not-- but if you do? Who knows what the next step down the ladder is.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael doesn’t say anything for a long time. He just sits, feeling the pain in his chest go from paralyzing to throbbing to dull but oppressive. He thinks about what Jeremy said. Homeless and hungry and desperate. How simple it had been to get worse… and worse… and worse… until he was an entirely different person.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He thinks about Lindsay and how much he misses her. Her laugh, her love for baking, her endless optimism and yeah, her anxiety too.  He thinks about Gavin, disappeared to who knows where. His best friend, his Boi, shy and goofy and so much smarter than he gave himself credit for.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>How do they all see Michael? What do they see in him? He’s angry. He’s full of pain and agony and insecurities; abandonment issues strong enough that even the thought of being left alone is enough to cripple him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael sniffs. He wipes tears away he hadn’t even realized were there. “Why’d you stop?” He asks Jeremy. He hates the way his voice sounds. Raw and hushed. “What changed?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looks at Jeremy. Jeremy offers a smile. It’s small and self-conscious, comforting and looking for comfort at the same time. “I met you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I saw your post, okay? And I answered it, you know that. I finally had someone that believed me. And everything you said about Gavin and what happened… It struck me as a way to redeem myself. If I could help you find your friend then maybe I could make up for all the shitty things I’ve done. Give me a chance to change.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Slowly, Michael pulls himself up. He sits, staring at Jeremy who sits less than a foot away from him. He sniffs again. “Jeremy…” Before he can think about it too hard, he leans over and wraps Jeremy into a hug.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy stiffens for a moment before relaxing. He hugs Michael back, just as tightly as Michael clutches him. Michael doesn’t say anything when he feels wetness on his shoulder-- he’s still crying, doing the same to Jeremy’s shoulder as Jeremy’s doing to his. They don’t need to talk about it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He pulls away. “I think I need some sleep.” He admits.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy laughs wetly. “Yeah, same here.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Michael knocks on the door of 11 Justice Row with Jeremy beside him. He can’t help the feeling of tightness in his stomach; anxiety that this will go wrong, so wrong, and they’ll be stuck at the beginning again. The door opens, and in front of them stands Benjamin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Benjamin stares at them. “Can I help you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy smiles. “We have some questions about Fazbear Entertainment, actually.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The door slams in their faces.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael turns to Jeremy. “So… back to square one, then.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy sets his jaw and knocks again. Two minutes later, there still hasn’t been an answer. Jeremy knocks again, more insistent.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Jer-” Michael starts, but stops as the door swings open once again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Go away.” Benjamin says. He crosses his arms and does his best to glare, but Michael’s seen worse. Michael’s stood in front of killer animatronics and survived-- he’s not going to be intimidated by a glare.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nope.” Jeremy says. “We just have a few questions. Ten minutes and we’ll be out of your hair.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Not interested.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Look, we just want to know what you knew about the animatronics, alright? You knew they walked around at night. Bet you knew more than that.” Michael says. He crosses his arms and matches Benjamin’s stance. “I’m trying to find Gavin.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You think he’s still alive?” Benjamin almost laughs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, he went somewhere. There’s been no body so I’m thinking he’s still alive.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know where he went.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy nods. “We didn’t think you did-- but we’re trying to solve the mystery. We just want to know what you know about the company, the animatronics, and the owner. Anything will help.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Benjamin stares at them. There’s no way he’s at all impressed by them, because neither look particularly put together and Michael had forgotten to brush his hair so he’d just shoved a beanie onto his head that he’d found in his car. “Fine. Come in, but make it quick.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He steps back to let them in, and Michael follows Jeremy. He shuts the door behind him. They’re right in the living room, and Benjamin heads straight to the couch and sits. He stares at them, but doesn’t offer anywhere for them to sit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well?” Benjamin asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You knew the animatronics attacked people at night.” It’s not a question, so Michael doesn’t bother to phrase it as one.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Benjamin scowls. “Yes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So why’d you still get a night guard?” Jeremy asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The higher ups wanted it. I don’t know why, they never told me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael shuffles on his feet. “How’d you find out?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The manager before me told me the day I came in to train. Pattillo, his name was.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael remembers the name from one of the files. “And you never said anything? What’d you tell the police when people went missing?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I told them they had no proof those people had disappeared on the property, and besides I was just the manager. All of my orders came from someone above me, I just did as they said.” Benjamin shrugs. He still looks pissed off. “There’s nothing they could prove, and nothing I could do about any of it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Were you threatened the way Gavin was?” Jeremy asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I didn’t threaten him. I just told him what would happen if he talked. I had no control over that.” Benjamin says. He sighs. “Yes, I was threatened. Anyone who knew the truth was. Don’t tell anyone or else. I just got it from the owner, unlike everyone else.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The owner.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “You talked to him in person?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“God, no. I never even met the man. I just got cassettes with pre-recorded messages on them.” Benjamin shakes his head. “Fazbear Entertainment shouldn’t have been able to get away with what it did. But when everyone is too scared to say anything-- and conspiracy theories run rampant on the internet-- it’s pretty easy to do just about anything without consequences.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you have any of the cassettes?” Jeremy asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Benjamin nods. “Yes. I was supposed to keep them and hand them off to whoever took over for me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Can we have them?” Michael says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Benjamin nods again. “I’ll get them before you leave. I won’t be handing them off to anyone else.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You said you’ve never met the owner-- you at least know his name, right?” Jeremy says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Geoff Ramsey.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you know where he lives?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why the hell would I know where he lives?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael watches them talk. </span>
  <em>
    <span>There’s got to be a way to find where he lives.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “Do you have any pay stubs?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why do you want those?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They have an address on them, don’t they?” Michael raises an eyebrow. “They came from somewhere.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Why do you want to know where Ramsey lives? I thought you were looking for Gavin?” Benjamin looks between Michael and Jeremy, bewilderment written across his face. “Do you think Ramsey will know where he is?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>No, I don’t. I don’t think anyone knows where Gavin is. But Ramsey knows more than anyone else about Fazbear Entertainment, and if I’m going to find the truth, it’ll be through him. In the least maybe I can find out what happened to those kids.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael shakes his head and says none of that. “I have some words for him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy nods enthusiastically. “Oh, I think we all do. He’s really done a number on our lives.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Not a chapter I expected to upload on my birthday, but one I'm proud of nonetheless lol. But we're getting closer to the finale, learning more about Jeremy, and we see a... more apathetic side of Gavin's old manager? Definitely not the same side we saw before. Let me know what you think!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Eight O'Clock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Listening to the cassette tapes end up being harder than first thought. For one, Michael doesn’t have a cassette player, and apparently the cassette player Benjamin used had been at Freddy Fazbear’s. Lost in the fire or saved from a terrible fate somewhere in the employee-only room, Michael doesn’t know. Neither he or Jeremy are interested in returning there anytime soon to find out. Michael finds one at Walmart for thirty bucks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy pays for it. Michael thinks about where the money came from. Where was it taken from? Who was caught in the middle, afraid and unsure? What violence did Jeremy willingly partake in without thinking twice? Does it even matter?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Am I just overthinking this?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The car ride home is silent as Jeremy takes the cassette player out of its box and checks it over. Michael drives. They pass the burned Freddy’s, and Michael reflexively looks, even though he really doesn’t want to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s a man standing on the sidewalk, looking at it. He doesn’t look suspicious, just a passerby curiously looking at the place that had once been-- must have been-- grand. Still, Michael wants to stop and scream at them to leave, to get away.</span>
  <em>
    <span> Don’t associate yourself with that company,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he’d say. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s nothing good.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Michael turns the corner, and the restaurant disappears from view, the man along with it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally home, they sit down on Michael’s couch together. Michael holds the tapes tightly in his hands. There’s only three altogether, and they’d determined beforehand that each cassette was only one-sided. Not a lot, but better than nothing. Who knows what information is hidden on them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy holds the cassette player. </span>
  <span>Booker meows and jumps up to join them, curling in Michael’s lap after a moment of deliberation. Jeremy frowns and glares playfully at Michael.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lucky.” Jeremy mutters.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael raises an eyebrow. “You want him? Take him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m not going to move a happy cat!” Jeremy says. “That’s blasphemy.”  He shakes the cassette player. “Give me one of the tapes.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael does, and Jeremy puts it in the cassette player.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It crackles to life. “Hello. Welcome to your job at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. A magical place for kids and grown-ups alike, where fantasy and fun come to life.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael rolls his eyes. That’s what the phone guy had said, isn’t it? Come to life. Sure does.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“As the manager of this location, you have many duties to perform. Scheduling, customer service, and of course, maintenance on our beloved animatronic characters. None of these should take precedence over another. Now, one of your duties will be to hire a night guard. Take care in deciding who will work overnight, as they will be the only human on duty. We do not want anyone of… suspicious or notable character in our building.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The cassette ends. Michael blinks, trying to commit the voice to memory. A man’s voice, higher pitched, somewhat squeaky. Probably a good forty at the time of recording, so undoubtedly older now, and who knows what that’s done to his voice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That was… succinct.” Jeremy says. He pulls the cassette from the player. “Ready to try the next one?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael hands him the second without a word. Jeremy puts it in and presses play.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fazbear Entertainment is not responsible for damage to property or person. As you may come to learn, there are certain aspects of our beloved animatronic friends that the general public cannot know. If you say anything to anyone, you will face severe consequences. Refer back to the documents you signed for further questions. I repeat: If you speak a word about the affairs of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza or Fazbear Entertainment, you will then be in serious trouble and will face legal consequences.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It ends. Same voice, same tired intonation. An imitation of a blank, professional tone, managing to really only sound jaded and cynical. Michael hates it, this man, Geoff Ramsey. How dare he sound that way? Like he can barely muster up the energy to record that message? When Michael has been running himself ragged for months and Gavin has lost nearly everything, including himself?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Fuck this guy.” Michael mutters.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy makes a sound of agreement. “Give me the last tape.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He does.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Now, you may also come across rumours about our establishment. People have been, and always will be, interested in turning us into a horror story or conspiracy theory. Do not pay attention to these. They have no basis in reality, and acting upon them will only cause trouble. There is nothing to fear here at Freddy Fazbear’s pizza so long as everyone does their jobs correctly. So, once again. Welcome to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And just like that, it ends.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy speaks first. “Vague and annoying.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Incredibly infuriating.” Michael adds. He looks down a Booker, contentedly purring in his lap. “But at least we know what he sounds like.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy nods. “And we have the pay stubs with an address. It’s better than nothing.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael glances at the cassette player again. “Why cassettes? Why not a video or something?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I mean, how big was Youtube ten years ago? What else should he have used?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A disk or vhs.” Michael says. “Not a fucking cassette? I’m pretty sure those weren’t still in use in 2010 or whenever these were made.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, nothing we can do about that.” Jeremy says. He stands and stretches. “I’ll be right back. I left the pay stubs on the counter.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael watches him walk away. His phone vibrates. It’s Lindsay. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hey. I think I’ll be coming home soon. Looking forward to seeing you.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Michael smiles. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I can’t wait. Everything okay over there?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh, yeah, everything’s good. I’m pretty exhausted, but that’s to be expected. Love you.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Love you. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jeremy walks into the room, and Michael looks up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sounds like Lindsay will be coming home soon.” He says.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah?” Jeremy asks. “Do we want to wait for her to come back so we can all talk to Ramsey together?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael thinks about it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>No.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Not-Gavin says</span>
  <em>
    <span>. We don’t know how long it’ll actually be ‘til she comes home, Micool. We might be able to go tomorrow.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No.” Michael agrees. “No, we’ll do this just the two of us. What’s the address?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy scans the pay stub. “1983 Cipher Street, Evernam, Pennsylvania. Man, what are with these road names? Justice Row, Cipher Street. My house used to be on East River Road. It was the most boring name ever.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael snorts. “Bet it was on purpose. A cipher’s like, a hidden message, right?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I think it’s a tool for figuring out hidden messages, actually.” Jeremy says. “Well, it’s appropriate.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael nods.</span>
  <em>
    <span> And Freddy’s is on Elm Street. Just like a fucking horror movie. We really should have seen this coming, actually.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He shakes himself. Booker meows, annoyed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So, we have an address and a name. Do we go now?” Michael asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do we know what we’re going to say? Even to get to Ramsey-- we don’t know where that address actually leads. We need to make a plan.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael groans. Plans. Again.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Nine O'Clock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Can’t we look up the address?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy blinks. He tilts his head. “Yeah, that might help.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael rolls his eyes as Jeremy opens his laptop. Knowing what building is at the address-- residential, business, even a bank-- can keep things simple. Simpler. If it’s residential, well. It’s more than likely Ramsey’s home. Michael runs his hands along Booker’s fur. The cat purrs louder.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Looks like it’s definitely a house, at least on street view. It must be his base of operations or something, too.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something occurs to Michael. “Hey, what did you do with all of your pay stubs and shit? Why don’t you have the address somewhere?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy blushes. “I just had my pay sent straight to the bank. Everything else I burned as soon as I could. Didn’t really want to think about Fazbear Entertainment. I also didn’t think about finding the owner, to be honest. Not until it was too late.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Fair enough. </span>
  </em>
  <span>“So-- we go to this house, it’s Ramsey’s. What then?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We make sure he lets us inside is what we do.” Jeremy says. “Either by trickery or by saying just enough that he’s convinced we need to talk.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Right so which one?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I think we should try to be honest.” Jeremy says. He reaches over and pulls Booker from Michael’s lap, holding the still-purring cat against his chest. “We knock on the door, confirm he’s Ramsey, and just tell him we want to talk about Fazbear Entertainment. If he asks… we’re looking for Gavin.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The ice returns to Michael’s veins. He shakes his head. “I don’t want to mention Gavin so soon. That gives him leverage. Look, he’s let unhinged animatronics kill people for years. What kind of person does that make him? Even if that wasn’t his intent-- and I doubt it was-- he still let it happen. We don’t mention Gavin that soon.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy stares at him. “Yeah, alright Michael. We can bullshit. Tell him we know the truth. I bet that’ll get us in his house.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And if he wants evidence of us knowing the truth?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy sighs. “Don’t sound so skeptical. You think he might be crazy but you still want to get into his house.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael growls in frustration. “Well I don’t know! I’m good at breaking things and yelling, alright? Not coming up with plans on how to get a guy to confess-- I don’t even know what. Murder? Probably not. I doubt he knows where Gavin is. What are we doing, Jeremy?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re looking for Gavin.” Jeremy says. “We’re trying to find out if someone actually killed kids at your location and if so, who and why and when. We want to know how the animatronics are sentient. We want to know how old Fazbear Entertainment is. Geoff Ramsey is the only person that can answer any of this. He’s the center of the puzzle, the last puzzle piece. We just need him to talk.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What if he is a murderer or some shit?” Michael asks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, I’m a murderer too.” Jeremy says. His voice is soft, patient, and steely calm. “I’m trying to change that, but I am still. A. Murderer. So if he is a murderer? There’s two of us to one of him. We’ve held our own against eight-foot animatronics out for blood. We could take him.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael leans forward. He doesn’t say anything, caught up in Jeremy’s confidence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>He’s right, Boi. You did pretty well against those animatronics. Better than I did. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Not-Gavin whispers in his ear. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Even if he isn’t a murderer you’d have a good reason to put him in prison..</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jeremy stands, still holding Booker to his chest. “But I don’t think he is a murderer. I think he’s a pretty shitty person, or a coward, at least. So if we go to his door and tell him we know enough to put him in the ground? A lifetime in prison? He’ll talk. He’ll tell us the rest like a songbird. Mr. Ramsey sir, we have evidence your animatronics are alive. We even have evidence they kill people, and that it’s a conscious choice. So, how about you tell us the rest, and maybe you can convince us not to turn you in. How’s that sound, Michael?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The ice in his veins turns to fire. A dull, roaring fire. “Sounds great, Jeremy.”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Holy shit-” Michael blurts. He jerks back.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Blood oozes from Lindsay’s nose. She lets out an awkward laugh and puts her hand to her nose to catch the blood before it can drip onto the couch. “It’s fine.” She says through the blood. “Happens all the time.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tissues.</span>
  <em>
    <span> Michael thinks. He looks around.</span>
  </em>
  <span> I need tissues.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>He spots them on the stand. He runs over and grabs them-- and by the time he gets back to the couch where they’d been sitting, blood has covered a ridiculously large spot on the floor. He shoves the box of tissues into Lindsay’s hands.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“This happens all the time?” He says, incredulous. “How have you not bled out yet?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Lindsay shuffles and, around the tissue, offers a small smile. “Jud a nodebleed. Dey stob.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Do they usually start when you’re in the middle of a make out session?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m Gavin.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Michael stares at the lanky British boy in front of him. They must be the same age or so, but he smiles shyly at Michael like a kid looking from behind their parent’s leg. Michael tilts his head. “Michael. Michael Jones.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Nice to meet you, Micool--”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“What did you call me?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Gavin frowns. “Micool?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“That’s not my name.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“I-- but you said--”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Michael. Not My-cool, or whatever the fuck you said. Michael.” He crosses his arms. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Gavin stares at him, wide-eyed. His lips curl into a deeper frown. “That’s what I was saying.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>He sounds so sad that Michael feels instantly guilty. He hadn’t actually meant to sound pissed off. It was just a joke. He drops his arms. “Sorry. I was trying to make a joke. Guess I was too serious.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Gavin blinks at him. He tilts his head. “It was a joke?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Meant to be.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Well, no harm done then.” Gavin says. He offers another timid smile. “Just a bit of miscommunication. We can start again.” He puts his arm out. “I’m Gavin.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Michael takes it. “Michael Jones. Nice to meet you, Gavin. If you haven’t already noticed, I don’t usually think before I do.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Well, I try not to think at all most the time, so it looks like we’re pretty evenly matched, Micool.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You know, he’s kind of cute.” Lindsay says to him when he walks through the door.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Michael stares at her. He drapes his jacket around one of her kitchen chairs. “What, like you’d date him?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>She smiles. She puts her hand to her chest. “Me? Oh no. I don’t go for the bedraggled but lovable doofus look.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Michael snorts. “What am I then?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’re an idiot for sure, but you’ve got common sense going for you. And bedraggled isn’t really the word I’d use… you’re more of a dynamo. A go-getter. Ornery and hot-headed but with a softer side.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I have common sense, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Michael thinks. </span>
  </em>
  <span>What a world where I’m the one with common sense. I’m a fucking idiot. I’m confused all the damn time.</span>
  <em>
    <span> “Then why’d you say he’s cute?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Lindsay fixes him with a pitying smile. She puts a hand on his shoulder. “I know your taste. You like hot women and goofy men. And he and I? We have the same chaotic energy, couldn’t you tell?”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Michael blushes. He shakes off Lindsay’s hand. “He’s not my type.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“He’s totally your type and you know it.”</span>
  </em>
  <em></em>
  <span></span>
    <br/>
    <br/>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>***</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Jeremy laughs. He does it a lot, and he never seems to go halfway with it. Always a full belly laugh, squeaking and shrill or deep and short. It’s… not exactly like Gavin’s. But Gavin also has a squeaking laugh, and sometimes when Jeremy laughs-- Michael almost forgets that Gavin isn’t around. Almost, and only for that brief fraction of a second, but Michael relishes in that feeling.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Then Jeremy looks at him and Michael remembers and hates it, but Jeremy just looks so happy that it makes Michael want to smile along with him. He likes Jeremy. Jeremy’s a lot like him. He seems to get what Michael’s thinking just as Michael thinks it sometimes. Like they’ve known each other for a long time.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Maybe it’s the close quarters. Maybe it’s the forced, repetitive interaction. Maybe it’s the goal they share in mind, their search for truth and want for revenge or retribution. Michael doesn’t know. But he knows he likes Jeremy like he likes Gavin, and.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Isn’t</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Something.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Because he likes Gavin like he likes Lindsay, doesn’t he? Something he’d never really wanted to think about, and definitely would never act on. He has Lindsay, and the last thing he should do is mess things up with her.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>But he still feels it, and yeah, that’s something.</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Just two more chapters now! We have our calm before the storm here, and boy, will there be a storm.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Ten O'Clock</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The house is more normal looking than Michael thought it would be. It’s suburban, with two tall oak trees lining the driveway. A simple two-story white house with a black mailbox and flower baskets hanging from the porch. There’s even a welcome mat in front of the door. It feels wrong to him, that this man has been living in such a normal place while having such sinister secrets. Then again, that’s how most people live, right? Hiding secrets within normalcy. </p><p>Michael and Jeremy share a look and exit the car at the same time. Neither speak as they walk to the front door, nore do they as Jeremy rings the doorbell. And finally, finally Michael meets the man that’s ruined his life.</p><p>Geoff Ramsey is a tall, thin man with messy graying hair. He wears a rock band shirt and jeans, and Michael sees the full sleeve tattoos clear as day. He looks like a dad, or a grandfather almost. Michael could see him on the street or at a store or even deliver a pizza to him, and he would never think twice.</p><p>He finds his voice. “Geoff Ramsey?”</p><p>Ramsey sighs. “That’s me.”</p><p>It’s the same voice as the cassettes, just older. Tired, but in a different way.</p><p>“My name is Jeremy, this is Michael. We wanted to talk about your company, Fazbear Entertainment.” Jeremy takes a half-step closer. “See, we know a few things that you might not want getting out.”</p><p>Ramsey eyes him, then turns to Michael. “I’d ask what you know, but, well, you’ve found me. That’s not exactly easy.” He steps back into his house and waves them in. “Let’s hear it.”</p><p>It’s just as normal inside as it is outside. A bit messy, but lived in for sure. Like he’d expect a normal house to look, one that isn’t owned by a broke college student or lived in by an abusive mother and abused son.</p><p>Ramsey leads them to the kitchen. “Have a seat, boys. I’ll make us something to drink-- do y'all like tea?”</p><p>Michael sits in a chair. Jeremy sits next to him. “I’ll drink tea.” Michael thinks about Gavin’s tea habits, and misses him.</p><p>Jeremy shrugs. “Do you have coffee? I’m really not much of a tea drinker.”</p><p>Michael glares at him while Ramsey has his back turned.<em> Are you out of your mind? </em> He mouths. <em> Don’t make him pissed at us because you want coffee! </em></p><p>Jeremy shrugs again as Ramsey talks. “I can make some of that. You want coffee instead, Michael?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“If you say so.” Ramsey busies himself with his task. Michael stares at his hands, clasped in front of himself on the table. Ramsey continues talking. “So, how about you lads tell me what you know, and what you want out of this little exchange, and we can go from there, huh?”</p><p>Lads. The only person he’s heard use that word is Gavin. Michael glances at Jeremy, who stares back with an open mouth. Michael sets his jaw. “Your animatronics are sentient. They think just like we do, and they remember shit. They have feelings.”</p><p>Ramsey snorts. It doesn’t sound like an amused sort of snort. “Yeah, they’re all as alive as we could make them. You got that down pat.”</p><p>Jeremy leans forward. “How did you manage that? AI?”</p><p>“It was a complicated process that quite frankly neither of y’all have the education to understand.” Ramsey glances at them. “Each of the animatronics have the same base code, with slight differences between the characters, but like twins or clones, each individual has slowly become exactly that. An individual, just like me or you.”</p><p>Michael scowls. “Murderous ones.”<br/>Ramsey hides a self-deprecating smile. “Most of them have spent their existences doing exactly the purpose they were created for, and no more. Dozens of locations have been the site of happy memories and cheerful characters. You two have apparently come across the animatronics that have corrupted. It’s…” Ramsey sighs. “Unfortunate.”</p><p>“Unfortunate?” Michael laughs. It’s not funny. He laughs more. “Unfortunate? Your creations have just decided to kill people, for years, and all you can say is that it’s unfortunate? You say it like it’s a fact of life!” Michael stands, slamming his hands on the table. Jeremy puts a hand around his wrist.</p><p>Ramsey frowns deeply. “They have the ability to change just as we do. Their life experiences change how they think and act, just like our own do. And sometimes, our life experiences corrupt us.”</p><p>Michael sits slowly. Jeremy lets go of his wrist and speaks. “Yeah? What about the animatronics going insane after an update, huh? Perfectly fine before, trying to kill the night shift after. What happened there?”</p><p>“You worked at one of those locations? Yeah, they were corrupted by the additional software. It was poorly mixed with the original. If you had a brain surgery and they left something in you, you’d be liable to have some personality changes.”</p><p>“Yeah, and if my personality changes caused me to murder people, I’d be put in jail.” Michael mutters. “Whether that got fixed or not.”</p><p>Ramsey sets a cup of tea in front of him. He sets a cup of coffee in front of Jeremy, and then he sits across from the both of them with his own cup of tea. “You aren’t wrong, Michael.”</p><p>“I know I’m not.” Michael says. He sneers. “Yet you’ve just let them live on.”</p><p>Before Ramsey can say anything to it, Jeremy speaks up. “We know that children were killed at a location.”</p><p>Ramsey pauses. “There was an incident.”</p><p>“We know you’ve done your damndest to keep your secrets. You only have your name where you absolutely have to. You let theories run wild. And despite sources saying Fazbear Entertainment has been around since the eighties-- we haven’t found any concrete evidence of it being open before this century. You’ve threatened people to keep them from talking.” Jeremy says. His voice is steady, unlike Michael’s quickly-beating heart. “So explain, Ramsey. Explain all of this. Why you haven’t done anything about your murder puppets even though they’re ruining peoples’ lives. Because if you don’t? You’ll regret everything you’ve ever done.”</p><p>Ramsey stares at him. He takes a long sip of his tea. And then he sets it down, and closes his eyes. The silence is deafening to Michael, forcing him to hear his own heartbeat raging through his body like molten lava, the worst kind of inferno. And nobody speaks.</p><p>Michael looks around. He won’t say anything. Speaking gives Ramsey a reason not to, and that’s the last thing he wants. Give him no other option but tell his tale. Give them the final puzzle piece. He spots a keychain trinket hanging from the handle of one of the cupboards: a little Freddy Fazbear in his tophat and bowtie, only golden instead of brown. Looking at the other cupboard doors shows other character keychain trinkets: Bonnie, Foxy, and Chica, all different versions, and other versions of Freddy.</p><p>“I already regret everything I’ve done with my life.” Ramsey says. His voice is quiet, that tired, jaded emotion all Michael can hear from him. “My intentions were only ever to make people happy. To give children memories they’ll cherish their entire lives. But I’ve made mistake after mistake, and each time I had to deal with one I only managed to dig myself deeper into a hole.”</p><p>“So you dig your heels in and fix shit.” Michael snaps. “You tell the truth no matter what and stop the bad shit from happening. You don’t just put a bandaid over a wound that needs stitches. You go to the damn hospital and get the stitches.”</p><p>The fire roars under his skin. He hopes it shows on his face.</p><p>Ramsey sighs. “Well, the past is the past. There’s nothing I can do to change that now. I can only work towards the future.”</p><p>“You still haven’t told us what we want to know.” Jeremy says. “You just waxed poetic about your mistakes. Tell. Us. The. Truth.”</p><p>“I’ll start with the beginning, then.” Ramsey takes another sip of his tea, and Michael remembers his own with a start. “Many years ago I had an idea. I wanted to make a place for children to have fun. I told my longtime friend about the idea, and together, we created the base for Fazbear Entertainment. We called it Fredbear’s Family Diner. We wanted animatronics that could play music for the children as a band, and our mascot as the lead: Fredbear. We created three others, and the first Bonnie was nearly as popular as Fredbear. We had two others, the first Chica and the first Foxy, but they weren’t the favorites.</p><p>“These animatronics were a bit different. They didn’t have the sentience. They were truly robotic-- but we wanted them to interact with children, so we created them to be springlocked. A person could clasp the endoskeleton to the exoskeleton and climb inside. They could wear it as a suit. It was dangerous. The springlocks are finicky, but we thought it was a good idea at the time. We didn’t expect anyone to see an employee climbing into the animatronics. Especially not my friend’s young son.”</p><p>Michael stays silent. He can only imagine how a kid would see that-- one of the mascots swallowing a person alive, maybe? Enough nightmare fuel for a kid to have nightmares for the rest of their life. Nothing compared to the actual hostility of a murderous animatronic, but enough.</p><p>“It scared him, obviously. And his older brother was awful about it, I found out later. There’s an age gap between them, enough that the older probably should have been more understanding of his toddler brother’s fear. He wasn’t, but even that’s just regular childlike behavior, really. It was an awful prank, and it went wrong in the worst way.” Ramsey says. He stares at his knuckles.</p><p>Michael glances at Jeremy. Jeremy watches Ramsey with wide eyes and an open mouth. Michael’s sure he has the same expression on his face. He forces himself to breath.</p><p>“What happened?” He asks.</p><p>Ramsey closes his eyes, sucks in a breath, and continues. “It was his birthday. We had it at our restaurant. We spent most days there, but I had remained blissfully unaware that he had been bullied by his older brother and his friends for the five days leading up to his birthday. They were… they were three and fifteen. Three. It was only seventeen years ago.”</p><p>Ramsey’s voice shakes with every word. Michael knows he’s undoubtedly reliving an awful memory. He’s had his fair share, after all.</p><p>“My daughter was the same age as him.”</p><p>“What happened?” Michael asks again. <em> Is this the bite of ‘87? Except in 2003 instead? </em></p><p>“They lifted him up to Fredbear’s mouth as he sang on the stage. There was nobody inside it at the time. If there had been… if there had been… then his head wouldn’t have been crushed.”</p><p>The ice returns. Jeremy gasps, but Michael barely hears it. Everything has suddenly gone quiet, suspiciously, unrealistically silent despite everything. The ice slowly takes over his veins until his entire body is frozen solid. And the crystal clarity that’s shocked him to the core settles deep inside his chest like a weight.</p><p>Michael swallows, squeezes his eyes shut, and forces himself to listen.</p><p>“Did he die?” Jeremy whispers.</p><p>“No. He nearly did, and everyone was wracked with guilt. The injury wasn’t intentional, even though the malice was there. My friend was torn up. He was terrified to lose a child. His wife had already passed. And the older brother retreated into himself until he was far from the boy I knew once. As for the child… he healed, slowly, and he changed as much as everyone else did. I spent a lot of my time with him. He and my daughter were always close. And we had to close the restaurant.</p><p>“We opened the first Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza two years later. Fredbear turned to Freddy, and he and Bonnie went from gold to brown and purple, respectively. Chica and Foxy stayed mostly the same, really. And instead of being springlocked suits, they were the animatronics that you know today. Literally. That first location is the one that your ‘murderous animatronics’ lived in. Where the children were killed.”</p><p>Michael opens his eyes. He looks at Ramsey, who still looks down at his knuckles resting on the table. “So who killed them? That’s the next question. Who ruined that?” He barely recognises his own voice. It’s gone hollow.</p><p>“My friend did.” Ramsey says. “William Afton.”</p><p><em> There it is. </em> The puzzle weaves itself together as another piece falls into place. They’d thought Ramsey had the final piece but really he’d had several-- a dozen pieces disguised as one. And Michael’s mind works overtime piecing together the information.</p><p>“One of the children was my daughter. My little girl. I was furious, you understand. Finding him in the act was an accident. It was my first day back at the restaurant after the children had vanished. After my daughter went missing. I walked backstage and there he was… wearing the Springlocked Bonnie suit. That was the only information we’d had to go on. Someone had worn it in the restaurant the day the children disappeared. We didn’t know who, or how they’d gotten it. It was just backstage, it wasn’t hidden away, and anyone snooping could have seen it and taken it. I just didn’t think it would be my closest friend.</p><p>“He’s dead. I confronted him and it blew up into an argument, and I threatened him. Of course I did. After all of his talk about his children, how special they were to him, he took away my own. I told him I would kill him once he got out of the suit. I would call the police and then I would beat the shit out of him until they arrived. It was everything he deserved. It was less than  he deserved. But he moved wrong, or too quickly, and the springlocked suit showed just how dangerous it was. He bled out in front of me long before the ambulance could show up.”</p><p><em> A loving but stressed father, a dead mother. An older brother that was always off doing his own thing. He’d spent more time with babysitters than his own family, but he’d never blamed his father. He was just busy, providing for two sons. </em> The mark of trauma. Excuses and denial.</p><p>“I dealt with it. I hid it as well as I could. I’d lost everything, hadn’t I? Except for my business. His older son wanted nothing to do with me. His younger son was attached, and I ended up taking care of him for the rest of his childhood. So I’ve done everything I can to keep my business alive out of selfishness. The one thing that’s been mine. And I’ve let a lot of people die because of that selfishness.”</p><p>“Including Gavin.” Michael says. “Gavin Free. The younger son of your friend. The child you took care of. Your daughter’s playmate. He’s been through more than any of us, and you let. Him. Die.”</p><p>Michael’s entire body shakes. He’s hot and cold all at once, shaking and frozen to the core; he’s absolutely enraged, and he wants Geoff Ramsey to know just how much he’s messed up.</p><p>“Michael?” Jeremy asks. His voice is hushed and weak. “What are you talking about?”</p><p>Michael glares at Ramsey. He bares his teeth at the man. “I’m right, aren’t I? That’s Gavin. That’s why he has a metal plate in his head. That’s why he never talks about his family. That’s why he’s here, in America, instead of Britain like his accent says he should be.”</p><p>Ramsey nods.</p><p>“Then why?!” Michael slams his hands on the table. His tea rattles and falls over, spilling across the table. <em> Like spilled blood. </em> “Why would you let him work at that restaurant? Why would he go back there after everything, even after he set the building on fire and ended up in the hospital?”</p><p>“Gavin isn’t dead, Michael. He’s very much alive. And while I’m sorry that you’ve had to experience this, it was necessary.” Ramsey says.</p><p>Michael’s stomach drops.<em> He’s alive? He is alive. I knew it! Then where is he? Why did he leave? Why wouldn’t he tell me what’s going on? </em></p><p>
  <em> ...He’s The Brother, isn’t he? </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Those comments </em>
</p><p>
  <em> did </em>
</p><p>
  <em> mean something. </em>
</p><p>“Necessary?” Jeremy asks. “How was it necessary?”</p><p>“You’ve come to me, angry that I’ve let so many terrible things happen. Then believe me when I tell you, I’m finally working to repent. I’m working to fix what I’ve done, and Gavin is my confidant.”</p><p>“Tell me where he is.” Michael demands.</p><p>Ramsey shakes his head. “I can’t do that. It’s far too late to interrupt now. It’ll only cause more problems.”</p><p>“What do you mean, it’s too late to interrupt now? I can’t even go and see him? Can I call him, at least? He’s my best friend!” Michael says. His voice cracks. “I just want to see him again.”</p><p>“We’ve moved onto Plan G. Plan A is what you experienced, Michael. It was our practice round. It didn’t go quite as we hoped, but it worked well enough. And as much as you think you know him, Michael, you didn’t.”</p><p><em> That’s a lie. </em> “Don’t fucking call me Michael. You don’t deserve to call me by my first name. And I do know him, Geoff.” He sneers the name with as much venom as he can. “He likes video games and computers. He likes watching birds and he hates wet bread and he was scared. He was scared every single night he went to work on your Plan A. So shut the fuck up. I know him, and you’re a bastard for saying otherwise. You didn’t see him in the hospital. I don’t know if that fire was your plan or not, but he got caught up in it bad. It fucked him up. He couldn’t remember things right. I was there for him, not you.”</p><p>“And yet when he walked out of the hospital and all the way to my restaurant, I was there to take him home.” Ramsey says. “I am not going to tell you where he is. Not until the deed is done, and my debt to the world has been repaid.”</p><p>“You’re just using Gavin for your own needs. How is that repaying your debt?” Jeremy says. Michael had forgotten he was here. “Does he even know we’ve been looking for him?”</p><p>“Of course he does.”</p><p>Something else occurs to Michael. Gavin is The Brother. Plan G must have been him or Ramsey… but who is BM Vagabond? They knew something. They can’t be Gavin or Ramsey. William Afton, the Springtrapped Maniac, is dead. Who is BM Vagabond?</p><p>“There was an article about the closings. We saw the comments about it. Gavin wrote a song or some shit, didn’t he? Using the name The Brother. But before that someone named BM Vagabond made a comment. ‘Sucks this place couldn’t reach its 20th birthday.’ And one Plan G replied ‘Not the only entity that never reached its 20th’. You two are Plan G. So who the fuck is BM Vagabond?” Michael leans forward. “They seemed to know something, after all.”</p><p>Ramsey takes a deep breath. “It’s my belief that BM Vagabond is Gavin’s brother.”</p><p> </p><p>Michael’s phone rings.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Whelp, that was a lot of exposition. We have one more chapter left until the end of this story, and yet it seems like everything has wrapped up... except for finding Gavin, that is. Sorry for the later update, I've had a long few days. Let me know what you think, because this chapter is basically the penultimate moment of everything and man was it hard to write, so I'd love to hear what you think of it! Stay tuned for the last chapter next week!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. The Final Hour</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Everyone freezes. </span>
  <em>
    <span>His brother.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Michael’s phone rings more. </span>
  <em>
    <span>His brother.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Jeremy stares at him, wide eyed. </span>
  <em>
    <span>His brother.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Ramsey watches patiently. </span>
  <em>
    <span>His brother.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Michael pulls his phone from his pocket.</span>
  <em>
    <span> His brother. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He reads the name. </span>
  <em>
    <span>His brother.</span>
  </em>
  <strong> Lindsay &lt;3. </strong>
  <em>
    <span>His brother.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He presses accept. </span>
  <em>
    <span>His brother. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He brings it to his ear.</span>
  <em>
    <span> His brother.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey.” Michael whispers.</span>
  <em>
    <span> His brother.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey.” Lindsay says. She sounds exhausted. “Hey, I’m coming home today.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s nice.” Michael says. “I’m not there.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lindsay pauses. “Where are you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael rattles off the address automatically. He glances at Jeremy, who watches him curiously.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...Why?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m talking to the man that owns Fazbear Entertainment.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lindsay makes a sound. “Oh, that’s… huh. Okay. Okay, I’m going to need you to go home and wait for me to get there. There are things we need to talk about, and I don’t want him anywhere near.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Michael eyes Ramsey. “If you say so.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And we've reached the end! Well, of this story. What does Lindsay have to talk about? Does she know what Michael has to say? No worries, next up is Lindsay's story! We'll see some stuff from her POV in "Wait, And Be Still". It'll be a few weeks until I start putting it out, both to give me some chapter buffer and to ensure I actually have time to write, seeing that school and work are really kicking my ass right now. Let me know what you think!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Update</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>So... stuff has happened recently, about Ryan... so I thought an update was necessary. I <strong>will</strong> be continuing this fanfiction series. Gavin, Michael, Jeremy, and Lindsay are the main characters, and though Ryan was written as a part of it, he will no longer be. </p>
<p>In the next installment/s he will be replaced by an original character (I'm still thinking of a name). I am still debating on editing things so that there are no references to Ryan, but the problem with that is that part of understanding this story is through references. I can't think of anyone in AH (that I haven't already written into the story) that fits the role of 'older brother' and 'probably evil' that I wrote.</p>
<p>As for Ryan himself. I have no sympathy for the man. He did some bad things, and frankly I want nothing more to do with him. I feel a lot of empathy for the rest of AH, and can only guess how they're feeling about it all. This is all I'll say on the matter.</p>
  </div></div>
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